this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2026
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Theoretically yes, though I'm in inclined to believe this may be a false positive.
Whenever a program looks at the contents of a file, some code (called a parser) runs that goes over the file content in order to discern its structure and pluck out the relevant information. Parsers essentially take formatted data and turn it into easy-to-work-with data structures. Since the parser's input could be some random file off the internet, potentially crafted by an attacker, a flaw in the parser code can easily be a security vulnerability. I think most security vulnerabilities are in parser code actually.
Now, the torrent file format is pretty simple, so the parser code ought to be simple as well, but that does not mean there cannot be security issues with it. So it is not impossible, in theory, that opening a torrent file could infect your computer with malware, same as opening any other file you get off the internet. You'd hope/expect, if any such security bug is found in any bittorrent software and/or is being exploited in the wild, it would be fixed quickly with an update.