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The story's twist? A commenter years later reverse-engineered the fake keygen and discovered its real payload: it secretly installed a legitimate old copy of Snagit 2018 with a hardcoded volume license key found on Pastebin. The malware author was literally just repackaging free trial resets and abandoned keys—then collecting affiliate ad revenue.

Thousands downloaded it. Antivirus software flagged it as a generic trojan, but the uploader insisted: "False positive. It just needs to modify system time."