If You Download Game Of Thrones Torrent, Your PC Will Be Exposed To Dangerous Malware

We're on the cusp of Season 8 of Game of Thrones, and fans are super excited.

Of course, some of them can't wait for the episodes to debut one by one, so they're going looking for torrents. And those fans are about to get one heck of a nasty surprise.

Earlier this week, cybersecurity firm Kaspersky released a report on torrents and how hackers are using them to infect people with malware. They focused on movies and TV shows used as the medium for the infections.

It turns out that last year, Game of Thrones had the highest infection rate, hitting a total of more than 20,000 users. And that's in a year when the series didn't have a single new episode. It's from a global total of 120,000 infected users last year.

In fact, the study showed that the first and last episodes of each season were the most likely to contain malware, probably because hackers know users trying out the show before committing are likely to torrent. The "Winter is Coming" episode of Season 1, the very first of the whole show, is the most dangerous.

In all, the researchers found 33 different types of threats in the torrented Game of Thrones episodes.

There were other shows likely to give you an infection too, showing just how popular they are. In second place was The Walking Dead, with Arrow in Third, as well as others like The Big Bang Theory, Suits, and This Is Us.

So if you're going to keep torrenting, you're likely going to hit some unsavoury downloads. You could try not doing that, but who are we kidding. So, at the very least, take a few precautions. Make sure the torrent is legit and not a fake. Look for telltale misspellings and comments. And of course, make sure the file doesn't end in a .exe if it's a movie or TV show.