Alex eventually had to wipe his entire hard drive to get rid of the infection. He realized then that the most dangerous thing you can download for your security is a "crack" designed to bypass it.
Within minutes, his CPU fan began to roar. The file he’d downloaded was a . It had disabled his Windows Defender and installed a monero miner , using Alex’s hardware to farm cryptocurrency for a stranger in another country. By evening, Alex noticed strange logins on his social media. The "free" software had come with a keylogger that captured every password he typed. Alex eventually had to wipe his entire hard
Alex was tired of the "trial expired" pop-ups. His laptop was sluggish, and a quick search led him to a forum promising a shortcut: . It looked official enough, hosted on a site with flashing green "Download Now" buttons. The file he’d downloaded was a