Game of Thrones fever is gripping Australia, with the final season set to break streaming records.



Foxtel has the exclusive broadcast rights in Australia for the final season in Australia, making the service the only way to legally watch the HBO drama.

The other legal option is download the show using iTunes of Google Play, although you will need to wait for all six episodes to air before it becomes available.

Game of Thrones general (Nine/Today)

There will be of course people who choose to illegally download or stream the series instead of using legal avenues.

Season seven of Game of Thrones remains the most pirated show in the world with more than one billion illegal downloads and streams – the premiere was illegally downloaded and streamed more than 120 million times in under 72 hours.

With the final season just weeks away, a warning has been issued for people planning to illegally download or stream the show.

A new report from security researchers at Kaspersky Lab said cyber criminals disguise viruses as Game of Thrones torrents, which will give hackers access to your computer when downloaded.

“Game of Thrones accounted for 17 per cent of all the infected pirated content in 2018, with 20,934 users attacked, despite being the only TV show in the list that didn’t have new episodes released in 2018,” the report stated.

“The first and the last episodes of each Game of Thrones season we analysed turned out the most dangerous, accounting for the greatest number of malicious files in Kaspersky Lab’s collection and affecting the most users.”

Kaspersky also analysed sample episodes from the two latest seasons of Games of Thrones and the original first season.

“The results revealed that the number of infected files spotted by our protection technologies differed significantly from episode to episode,” the report read.

“The common theme we were able to spot was that the first and last episodes were used as a disguise for malware each season.

“Also, the titles of the opening and closing episodes of each season were used the most actively to hide malware compared to other episodes.”

A total of 33 threat types were found hiding behind Game of Thrones torrents, with the most common threat a Trojan - a dangerous type of malware able to give hackers control of the infected system which could cost you everything.

“The Trojan family pretending to be Game of Thrones that most actively attacked users usually looks like a shortcut to the file and is distributed very differently – usually through emails or questionable websites,” the report read.

The best advice ahead of the latest season is to pay the money and watch it legally.