Researchers Push Over 2 Million Updates to Remotely Disable Popcorn Time Updater That Could Fuel a Botnet

{"heading1":"Background on Popcorn Time and the Updater","content1":"Popcorn Time is an abandoned copy of a free app that streamed pirated films and TV shows over BitTorrent. The original Popcorn Time shut down in 2014, but several copies kept running under the same name. Eye Security found the updater during a routine threat hunt.","heading2":"Operation IXIM: The Disabling Process","content2":"Eye Security registered the abandoned web addresses and served the machines an update that stops and disables the updater. The update was tested and reworked to ensure it was not flagged as malware. The update was sent to more than 2 million systems, reducing traffic by 90 percent.","heading3":"The Future of the Updater and Popcorn Time","content3":"The updater is now being handled by Shadowserver Foundation. Popcorn Time remains dangerous as it runs on a 2014 browser engine with its security sandbox turned off, loads content over unencrypted connections, and pulls in code from other abandoned web addresses. Eye Security advises users to uninstall Popcorn Time to mitigate the risk."}