In Brazil, piracy platforms were on average 29 times more likely to expose users to cyber threats, rising to more than 54 times higher risk in worst‑case scenarios. Peer‑to‑peer, anime, and scam piracy sites showed the highest levels of cyber threats. In the worst-case scenario, P2P piracy sites were 100 times riskier than legitimate websites in Brazil, followed by Anime piracy sites (80x) and Scam piracy sites (67x).
The details are in a study conducted by cybersecurity expert Dr. Paul A Watters of Macquarie University and Cyberstronomy Pty Ltd., commissioned and released by ACE. A separate report about piracy in six Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America was released separately by the same sources.
The analysis frames the piracy challenge primarily as a matter of consumer protection and national security. Modern digital piracy platforms serve not only as unauthorized media distribution channels, but as dangerous entry points for malicious software, identity theft, financial fraud, and data security breaches that can impact business and government operations, often driven by Chinese infrastructure.
Impact of piracy in Brazil
Digital piracy in Brazil reaches far beyond lost revenue: there are economic and social consequences:
“Piracy fundamentally alters cultural expectations, disrupts creative economies, and undermines public confidence in digital services. A nation abundant in cultural production, Brazil relies on strong intellectual property frameworks to foster economic innovation and safeguard creative labor. Yet the pervasive normalization of piracy has generated systemic weaknesses, particularly among digitally engaged youth.”
Brazil’s piracy landscape
To reflect Brazil’s distinctive piracy landscape, the study examined seven site categories:
- Sports – Sites or streams rebroadcasting live sporting events (e.g., football, motorsport, boxing, or regionalleagues such as CONMEBOL and Liga MX) without authorization.
- Streaming – Portals offering unauthorized access to movies, TV series, or telenovelas via embedded players or direct-download links.
- IPTV Retransmission – Sites distributing live broadcast feeds rebroadcast without rights, often using offshore servers or CDN-based delivery.
- IPTV Subscription – Fee-based services selling channel bundles and VOD content through web dashboards or Android TV applications.
- Anime – Portals hosting Japanese animation dubbed or subtitled in Portuguese without permission from rights-holders.
- P2P – Peer-to-peer and torrent networks that enable downloading of unlicensed media files directly from other users.
- Scam – Fake or deceptive sites impersonating legal streaming or IPTV services to harvest login credentials or payment details.
These seven categories represent a broad range of piracy distribution models and content foci active in Brazil and allow comparative measurement of consumer exposure to cyber threats.
Data Collection and Analysis
In total, 240 URLs were analyzed: 210 piracy URLs (30 per category across seven categories) and 30 control URLs. Each domain was scanned through VirusTotal’s URL Analysis API, and the resulting detections were recorded across five standardized threat classifications:
- Malicious – Confirmed malicious behavior verified by one or more vendors.
- Suspicious – Heuristic detections of potential, but unverified, threat activity.
- Phishing – Credential-harvesting or impersonation attempts.
- Spam – Presence of intrusive pop-ups, adware, or unsolicited communications.
- Not Recommended – Distribution of potentially unwanted or unsafe applications.
Threat modeling
Within the Brazilian piracy landscape, threat modeling reveals how criminal operators leverage unlicensed content platforms to distribute malware, harvest credentials, and penetrate users’ residential and business networks. These environments merge international piracy patterns with regional characteristics including limited enforcement, elevated content pricing, and widespread adoption of inexpensive streaming hardware.
Pro-active government programs
Brazil has introduced – and continues to refine – legislation aimed at criminalizing unauthorized system access, malware distribution, and online fraud.
Brazil’s most recent framework – the Estratégia Nacional de Cibersegurança (E-Ciber) – was formalized in August 2025. The country’s Computer Crime and Cybercrime provisions are embedded within the Penal Code and associated laws.
Brazil has established a broad cybersecurity response architecture centered on CERT.br, the national CSIRT responsible for coordinating incident handling and issuing security advisories across both public and private sectors. Complementing this is CTIR Gov, the federal government’s incident-response center, which monitors federal networks, manages cyber incidents affecting government systems, and supports the implementation of E-Ciber.
E-Ciber also places substantial emphasis on strengthening the national cyber workforce through education, training, and professionalization. Human-capital development is identified as a central pillar of the strategy. The strategy underscores the importance of public-awareness campaigns and digital-citizenship initiatives to improve society’s overall security posture.
Why it matters
As Brazil’s digital connectivity and consumer purchasing power continue to grow, the country’s online population has become an increasingly attractive target for cyber-criminal activity.
Governments and regulatory bodies have made considerable progress in establishing cybersecurity frameworks and data-protection regimes.
Further reading
Consumer risk from piracy in Brazil. Report and analysis (.PDF). May 2026. By Dr. Paul A Watters of Macquarie University and Cyberstronomy Pty Ltd. Commissioned and released by ACE (Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, MPA)
