A new report, “Consumer Risk from Piracy in Southeast Asia,” authored by Dr. Paul Watters and released by ACE, explored activity in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.
The research found that piracy sites—including streaming piracy platforms, P2P networks, IPTV services, scam portals, anime piracy sites, and manga repositories—carry a cyber threat risk more than 22 times higher than that of mainstream legitimate sites.
Types of risks include
- Malware & Drive- by Downloads: Piracy sites often bundle trojans, worms or keyloggers in seemingly innocuous downloads or embedded players. Simply visiting a compromised streaming portal can trigger a “drive- by” download that installs malicious code without user consent
- Phishing & Credential Theft: Piracy platforms often imitate legitimate login or payment pages to harvest usernames, passwords and two-factor tokens. These stolen credentials can be reused on banking or social-media accounts, enabling identity theft, unauthorized fund transfers and account takeovers
- Spyware & Data Exfiltration: Hidden spyware and keyloggers in cracked software or APKs monitor keystrokes, take periodic screenshots and exfiltrate personal documents to remote servers
- Ransomware & Cryptojacking: Many illicit download hubs and P2P networks carry ransomware payloads that encrypt your data and demand payment for its release
- Botnet Recruitment & Network Compromise: By installing P2P clients or cracked network-tools, users can unwittingly join botnets that coordinate distributed denial- of-service (DDoS) attacks, spam campaigns or additional malware distribution
Risk-levels by service type
Consumers in Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia have the highest average relative risk of encountering a cyber threat from a piracy service – each approaching or exceeding a 34-fold increase over legitimate sites.
By contrast, the study uncovered almost no cyber risks on the most popular mainstream (non-piracy) websites in the region.
Other useful content
The report also contains sections that detail cyber threat models for digital piracy, cybercrime and consumer wealth in Southeast Asia, and protective factors in Southeast Asia’s cyber policy and regulatory responses.
Conclusions
The consistently high levels of risk identified across all five countries underscore the urgent need for coordinated responses at both the national and regional levels. The study’s findings reinforce the case for proportionate and transparent site-blocking regimes, strengthened law enforcement capability in digital forensics and cyber incident response, and comprehensive public awareness campaigns tailored to local contexts.
By implementing these measures, policymakers can help reduce consumer exposure to malware, phishing, scams, and other cyber harms linked to piracy – ultimately protecting digital citizens and supporting the region’s growing digital economies.
Methodology
To quantify the cyber risk posed by these services, this study analyzed the top 30 sites per piracy category. in each country, across Streaming, Anime, Streaming Sports, P2P, IPTV, Manga, and Scam sites, using VirusTotal (with over 95 security vendors). Detections were then compared to a control group comprising each country’s 30 most popular mainstream sites. A total of 1,200 URLs were empirically analyzed using multi-vendor threat assessment.
The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) provided a list of piracy websites offering unauthorized film and TV content, along with fraudulent sites popular in the five countries28. ACE compiled this list based on copyright removal requests, site blocks in various countries, and other reliable sources. From this list, specific samples were chosen for comparison.
In addition, a control sample from each country’s top 30 most popular mainstream websites was assessed for a valid comparison between piracy sites and typical websites. This allowed for reliable population inferences using sample standard deviation to calculate standard error. This method ensured representative samples and an experimental design with a control for valid conclusions.
Where a piracy site was also present in the control sample, the next most popular site in the top sites list for that country was substituted. Sites associated with illicit activity – such as unregulated online gambling, pornography, cyberlockers and similar illicit services – were excluded from the control list to avoid conflating their distinct threat profiles with piracy-related risks. URLs linked to advertising networks were also excluded.
Further reading
Consumer Risk from Piracy in Southeast Asia (PDF). July 2025. by Dr. Paul Watters, Cyberstronomy Pty Ltd., Honorary Professor of Security Studies and Criminology at Macquarie University, and Professor of Information Systems at Holmesglen Institute.
Study finds consumers up to 65 times more likely to be infected with malware when using piracy sites. Press release with link to the study. July 22, 2025. Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE)
Why it matters
According to the author, “Digital piracy in Southeast Asia extends far beyond lost revenues, reshaping cultural norms, creative ecosystems and regional economies. Economic growth and innovation rely on an enforceable intellectual property protection system, while the rise of piracy poses challenges to socioeconomic stability, with prevention being a key strategy recommended to policymakers.”
The study offers granular, cross-country insights designed to inform evidence-based policy, regulatory reform, law enforcement resource allocation, and consumer education.
“The research findings reaffirm the extensive harms piracy networks inflict upon consumers and the economy in Southeast Asia,” said Larissa Knapp, Executive Vice President and Chief Content Protection Officer for the Motion Picture Association. “We applaud Dr. Watters and his team for their work in revealing the dangers of using these illicit sources, and we look forward to further collaboration with law enforcement throughout the region to detect these bad actors, deter future misdeeds, and dismantle unlawful operations that endanger a thriving creative marketplace.”
