Rargb included a .exe which if you changed to .txt was just a message saying don’t reupload. It was to prevent indexers or something with basic “don’t download .exe” rules. So that is probably why it is not fail by default in Sonarr for everyone? I don’t know for sure but it is something.
When this happened to me it always seemed to be episodes that hadn’t actually aired yet. I ended up installing swurapp (automatically unmonitors episodes until they’ve aired, to stop them being grabbed) and haven’t had it happen since.
The problem is your roommate, your parent, or 3am you double clicking it in the downloads folder. (do NOT execute execute the skid malware)>
Yeah, like any of those scrubs has access to any folders of any importance.
Settings -> Indexers -> Pick one -> Fail Downloads -> Select “Executables” and “Potentially dangerous”
You still have to remove the malware from your torrent client, but at least sonarr will give up importing it and try a different torrent.
Dealing with the executableshas been such a pain in the ass, thank you so much for pointing this out.
I was also flabbergasted when I observed this. No idea why this is not default, but you can configure
"Fail downloads" = "Executables", "Potentially dangerous"in the Sonarr Indexer options to prevent these downloads. Enable advanced settings first.I actually saw this last night while I was looking for another setting. Why would I ever want sonarr to download an executable, and why would they think I’d want it that way by default? It made me wonder if I was missing something.
Good find, thanks! Kind of annoyed I can’t set those values in Prowlarr to automatically propagate to all the *arrs, but still good to have the option once Prowlarr indexers are sync’d to other apps.
I think this isnt a thing with prowlarr, is it?
It is, I’ve seen it. People upload .exe files pretending to be an episode day before it’s release. Prowlarr will find those and start downloading.
Also frustrating that sonarr won’t allow you to NOT auto search for an episode before it’s released. It auto downloads WAY more garbage than early releases in my experience. In fact I’m not sure I’ve seen it actually download something successfully before it’s official release.
But searches online show sonarr devs pushing back against it for some unknown reason.
I believe the v5 sonarr beta has this feature. So it’ll be on the main branch soon enough.
Are people running the arr stack in windows?
I did have mine up and running in windows some years ago before I switched my daily driver, yes.
Some clients can download with RSS from searches, and people can just download manually.
The author getting pissed every step of the way is really funny, great write-up!
I blacklist just about anything executable from downloading in Qbit but it stills feels a little clunky, I wish the ARRs would inspect the torrents and immediately ignore the .exe ones before they even hit Qbit, I feel like it should be a default option to help the Newbies out.
I remember spotting this when the Mario Galaxy film came out. The top seed was a 2GB exe.
I hope we come full circle and we get “Avril Lavine - Girlfriend.mp3.exe”
There was a GTA6.exe that appeared on the torrent sites around the time of the first gameplay video leaks, I’m sure it got a few people.
Cool to see someone pull this kind of malware apart. Interesting read.
I have been using cleanuparr to automate this. I have exes blocked in the download client and then cleanuparr sees they aren’t being downloaded and removes them and triggers another search.
I know that qBit has an “excluded file name” option so just add *.exe to it.
.bat, .vbs, .ps1: “it’s showtime”
Add .js, .url, .com, and .lnk to that list too.
And .scr
I’ve been hit by this a few times recently too. No ill effects other than needing to clear it from the queue thankfully.
What torrent sites are affected?
Technically, all* could be. They’re just indexing the torrents that are out there.
*all = the ones that would list TV shows, etc. of course
Imagine trusting Torrents when Usenet is right there.
Imagine paying for pirated content, when high quality torrents are right there
Hold on, even if you’re using torrents, you still have to pay for a decent indexer right? Or has stuff changed in the last few years?
I’ve been at this since Napster was a thing, so imagine my surprise to hear that folks are paying to pirate.
Usenet I get, but private trackers? only real benefit would be a risk reduction of being caught by your ISP, but that’s easily overcome by using a VPN.
I don’t know why you are annoyed by this.
You use an automatic tool. It’s bound to fail or make a mistake once in a while.
The “uploader” likely knew this, so they had some fun. It’s not like what you are doing is legal or anything. “Le me go complain on my blog about someone messing with how I do my illegal activites”.
I don’t know why you are annoyed by this.
I don’t read it as annoyance. It’s a rundown of them tracking down who is doing it and what it actually is. They’re just flagging for it.
This seems like a one off for them, but for me whenever tracking ongoing TV series I would regularly get malicious files as they appear before the real ones, and get found and downloaded by sonarr.
These days I only automate from private trackers, and enable a public tracker for an interactive search only if something can’t be found on the private trackers.
As annoying as this is, I agree. It’s a case of automate better or add a confirmation layer to the download decision.
The reason I don’t auto-DL anything yet is cos I’m too lazy to spend hours making sure it’s setup correctly.
