Can a virus be contracted through video downloading

Athryn · Post by **Athryn** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 11:32 pm

My family recently purchased a new computer because our old one was running so slow and then crashed. It was a virus and my dad is convinced it was from downloading from this site. Is that possible?

Kalium · Post by **Kalium** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 11:37 pm

No. AVIs, MPEG, MPEG-2s, and other video files are not executables. They are data files. It's literally not possible in those cases.

However, given that there are some hypothetical flaws in WMV scripting, I suppose it might be possible there, but I doubt it's actually being done.

Short answer: no.

Long answer: no, although it may be theoretically possible. Check that, it's not possible to get infected just by downloading something. Execution must occur for actual infection to take place.

trythil · Post by **trythil** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 12:05 am

Kalium wrote:Long answer: no, although it may be theoretically possible. Check that, it's not possible to get infected just by downloading something. Execution must occur for actual infection to take place.

The line between "download" and "execute" is sometimes pretty blurry from the user's perspective. Microsoft products are especially vulnerable to this (see: IE, Outlook) but they're not the only offenders.

Athryn wrote: It was a virus and my dad is convinced it was from downloading from this site. Is that possible?

Yes, it is possible.

Is it likely? No.

Keeper of Hellfire · Post by **Keeper of Hellfire** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 7:02 am

Kalium wrote:No. AVIs, MPEG, MPEG-2s, and other video files are not executables. They are data files. It's literally not possible in those cases.

The times that malware was bond to executables is over since a while. Nowadays nearly every file can carry malware and will drop/execute it due to vulnerabilites of the associated program. It isn't long ago that M$ had to fix a bug in the picture and fax preview which allowed JPEGs to execute code.