Abandoned Popcorn Time apps had to be disabled to prevent a zombie army
Summarized by News Era from reporting by theverge.com. How we work
What Happened?
Remember Popcorn Time, the app that served as an easy-to-use front end for streaming torrents of movies and TV shows? Development of the MPAA's least-favorite app of the 2010s has been abandoned for years, but the "Netflix of Piracy" software is still installed on millions of devices that are just waiting to join a bot army. Researchers at Eye Security found the updater for a Popcorn Time fork called "Time4Popcorn" still running on tons of Windows, macOS, and Android devices located around the world, phoning home to now-abandoned web domains over unencrypted HTTP and running an outdated, insecure version of Chrome.
Key Takeaways
- 1Abandoned Popcorn Time apps were disabled to prevent a botnet.
- 2Researchers found an updater for a Popcorn Time fork still running on many devices.
- 3The software was phoning home to abandoned domains and running an outdated Chrome version.
Summary written with AI from the story's source text.
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