If it’s suss use a vm before your main OS.
And start with no network for the VM
This is a good idea and a good practice in my opinion. Some malicious code detects when it’s being sandboxed and hides itself until it’s running somewhere it can do damage though.
Back when I used cracks often the cracks were small keygens and sometimes a patched main exe/dll, so I could just generate the key in a vm/sandboxed environment and inspect the patched binary, usually they did nothing weird. Huge repacks are often very sketchy though… Nowadays there are many great FOSS alternatives so I tend to use them more.
Test strips. PSA: Everyone should test their drugs and carry narcan.
I was gonna say “have someone else smoke it first”
first visual inspection: is there any rash or poop or anything nasty in there? then sniff.
