Shit like this is why I’m done with public trackers.
This shit is why I never used the arr stack. Never automate incoming data. It fetches what I intend it to fetch.
What do you use instead?
Bittorrent
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.
“Why do I need to download 7zip? That’s too hard. Everything should be a self-extracting exe!”
A few moments later…
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.
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.
Wait, wtf, this isn’t on by default??
Dealing with the executableshas been such a pain in the ass, thank you so much for pointing this out.
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.
Next Sonarr release will have this.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I know that qBit has an “excluded file name” option so just add *.exe to it.
Yeah they had this enabled without knowing it
qBittorrent marked it “finished” two seconds after adding it with total_downloaded: 0, so nothing actually landed on disk. No idea why. Don’t care. Thanks qBit.
Think .exe is the default value but you can add more
.bat, .vbs, .ps1: “it’s showtime”
Add .js, .url, .com, and .lnk to that list too.
And .scr
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’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?
Lime and eztv were the culprits for me, I removed them from automatic search in *arr
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.
Eh. I use Usenet and honestly the reliability sucks. I almost never successfully get quality media from there. It’s either missing too many blocks, doesn’t exist, or is grossly mislabeled.
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.
VPN and public trackers gets you more shows and films than any human could ever consume. I’m not sure why any other method exists.
The two main benefits I’ve seen of private trackers are that you avoid the issue in the OP which happens all the time on public trackers, and that shows download in seconds.
Not sure how helpful they would be if things weren’t automated. I just have things set up so my Jellyfin users can request shows and they get downloaded automatically.
But with that said, “private” doesn’t mean it costs money, just that it requires an account (and usually that is an application process). It means they can kick people off for uploading things they shouldn’t.
@Hal @nik282000 Some private trackers function as recommendation systems, too. It’s sort of like having a netflix account where you can see what they’re recommending (or what’s popular), but instead it’s your fellow pirates talking about how much they loved or hated a show or movie.
You use them long enough, you also learn which users prefer absolute garbage and which ones have solid recommendations. Much better than paid ads or some easily-gamed algorithm, imo.
I probably miss out on that aspect as I have everything automated 🤷
No, most public ones are fine. Always have been. I’ve never used a private tracker and have had very few issues. Especially after using Radarr, etc. to pick out good and bad torrents.
Search lists in qbit are how most people manage.
I personally use torrentleech which is a private tracker but has basically everything and super permissive rules. Very very easy to maintain ratio and to also get invited and started. I have 4.8TB of upload credit. Searching in qbittorrent or manually across public sites took too long for me when i usually want to find a higher res or higher bitrate version of something. I also always saturate my download speed even with only a few seeds since they’re almost always seedboxes.
AH ratio - I knew there was a valid reason I chose Usenet back when I set everything up, my upload speed sucks! :)
Torrents are pretty terrible without private trackers. Since majority of free sites have no access to an API and require prowlarr/jacket to create one, a cloudflare slover to bypass bot protections and even then it’s janky.
If you use private trackers, you now have to keep seeding downloads to keep your ratio healthy, and require additional trickery to allow files to be seeded after sorting by sonarr.
Usenet is plug and play, as the indexes are built with this functionality in mind and it’s far less likely to run into malicious uploads, as there is curation occuring on the paid indexes, ie, they are insentivised to make the paying customer happy.
I have never used a private tracker and have got everything I ever wanted allegedly from just googling… I really don’t see the need for private trackers especially with the upload ratio in mind…
I have been using private trackers for 15 years now and have been extremely happy with them. I dont mind seeding back, plus not all of them have the ratio requirement. My tv show site knows it would be very hard to keep that from slipping so instead of ratio its just a certain length for episodes and season grabs. I really dont care about keeping my bittorrent app running since i leave my pc on anyway. As for sonarr it just copies the file to the new directory and renames it, after a few months ill do a cleanup that takes 2 min.
As for usenet, my coworker loves it but he definitely says it has issues which may or may not be an issue today or workarounds for it? He has said the takedown requests are so fast now that finding a lot of stuff that releases quickly can be difficult if you dont use sonarr or radarr to grab right away. Every now and then he has to ask me to find stuff.
The only real issues ive ever had is the instability where sometimes theres outages and not much you can do. I remember last year or maybe year before that one of the biggest had a 2 month outage and things looked bleak.
