When we hear the word malware, the first thing that comes to our mind is a malicious program that can steal data from the attacked device and use it for various other malicious purposes.
But recently researchers from BleepingComputer have reported a malware that comes with quite a unique behaviour.
This malware is named Vigilante by SophosLabs Principal Research, Andrew Brandt, the malware is known to have a role that actually ‘helps’ its victims not to do anything illegal.
This Vigilante malware will modify the victim’s device host with a well-known pirated site and direct it to the localhost IP address of 127.0.0.1.
That is if the victim accesses pirated sites such as The Piratebay and the likes, the victim’s device will automatically direct the connection to its own IP address which makes the pirated websites inaccessible to the victim.
“Malware has a clear motive, preventing people from visiting pirated websites even temporarily,” Brandt said.
It is also stated that the malware hides as a free application and software and will launch its action if it has been installed by the victim.
Although this malware is known to be quite helpful, however, users who feel affected by this malware are also advised to remove it by installing trusted anti-virus software because we don’t know what other things this malware will do.