Basically I want to download a serie in a specific language and absolutely nowhere I can find it and recently I saw that the serie is available in the language I want in The Pirate’s Bay but I know the bad reputation of the site and I have never used it.
I ask if it can be considered “safe” in quotes because at least in this specific case the files are not executable, they are only .mkv and in fact I don’t even plan to play them on my PC, I plan to play them on a computer I use as a media center that has no internet access (and it’s Linux). And although this setup should be considered “safe” enough, the question itself makes me curious.
In the torrent there is only the chapters of the serie and nothing else, or so it seems, I would analyze the files in VirusTotal before playing them but each chapter weighs more than 1GB (they are in 1080p and last more than 40 minutes) and VirusTotal does not allow to upload files of a certain weight.
I am sorry for the generic question about a site with a bad reputation, but although according to my knowledge everything should be fine, there are always things that one does not consider or go unnoticed due to ignorance or lack of knowledge.
It has to be executed to have any danger, so you’d need a zero day exploit for your media player, even then it should be contained at user level rather than system. I’ve not really heard of it happening, but it’s theoretically possible I guess, would take a really bad coding mistake. Keep your players updated and you should be fine.