What for someone cracks software and let you download it?

I am sure you saw or at least heard when your friend downloaded Photoshop, AutoCAD, Windows or other pirate software from torrent and installed it. Have you ever asked why someone would waste their own time for software vulnerabilities analysis, development of a patch or a key generator, and then let everyone use it? That looks too altruistic for thousands of software available on the internet. Let's try to list possible scenarios.

1. Install malware on your machine

That may sound surprisingly simple, and most people fall into deep self-deception and do not to believe in this obvious intent. When you install pirate software or use keygen, how many times have you been asked to enter the admin password to make things working? For the intruder that gives endless possibilities and infinite access to your machine. What for? For example, for building vast bot network or using your hardware to mine cryptocurrency while you are away. Loading pirate software with malware is the most common scenario.

2. Hacktivists testing their skills

Sometimes people learn for years and search for opportunities to put their knowledge into practice. Others simply fight for the "world without borders". In both cases, they are hacktivists and just do that for fun. It happens rarely, but it still exists.

3. Expand customer base

If you are competing for the market, you may try to use this channel to increase your customer base and then convert them into clients. Corporations are now moving more and more to a software as a service model, where you get limited functionality for free and then need to pay to receive the rest. So this scenario is unlikely.

4. Cracking software as harm to a rival.

Most likely cracking software with the intent to harm a rival will have the opposite effect and will just increase the customer base. This scenario is very unlikely.

Just to recap, cases above are related to corporate and personal laptops and PCs, Andriod and iOs smart-phones, to servers and game-consoles, namely to everything.

If you used pirate software and nothing happened, that only means that you have NOT noticed that something happened.