>>16290705
Using virtual machines to test cracked programs before running them on your PC is a valid approach, though I'd suggest using Sandboxie instead since with it you can more easily see what's modified by the program. The problem is that Sandboxie doesn't work with all programs. Of course, all this might be useless if the malicious content is hidden / obfuscated well enough. Ultimately, I think that running any kind of pirated software always poses some risk, risks that obviously can be calculated and minimized, but if any kind of risk no matter how small is unnaceptable then piracy is not for you.
Personally, I don't even use any of that - I just upload the cracked files to virustotal, and if they come off unsuspicious and people are okay with it in the comments section from the download page, I just take the risk, unless it's from some shady russian or chink no-name site that asks you to download some proprietary download manager to get the game. But then I wouldn't even bother, ofc.
You should always go after GOG releases of games that use the original GOG installers, these are usually the safest. And then, scene releases from codex, cpy, reloaded, prophet or darksiders - the ElAmigos repacks, very popular nowadays, are safe too.
>I understand that (((certain people))), namely chinks, put all kinds of shit in and around piracy sites to turn the unwary's computers into chugging printers of their cryptoshit.
Yep, chinks and to a lesser extents, slavs - be very careful of pirated content originated from Russian/slav sites too, as there's often malware and miners in them. The problem is that nowadays, especially for smaller, less known indie games, chinks and slavs are often the only source for pirated versions - so if you write them off altogether, you might be cucking yourself out of pirating lots of indie games.
One thing you can do to mitigate this problem on games pirated from chinks and slavs,is use the cracked Steam API files from Codex or CPY (obtained from another cracked game), instead of the cracks provided by them. If the game only uses basic Steamstub protection this will almost always work, provided you edit the crack .ini file (usually steam_emu.ini or steam_api.ini) with the correct parameters for the game. I've used this technique to replace cracks in literally dozens if not hundreds of games.
>torrent clients
qbittorrent is fine but a bit bloated for my tastes, while Deluge is as lightweight and minimalistic as old versions of uTorrent. If you don't mind that then there's nothing wrong in using qbittorrent.