Stupid question but is it possible to get a virus from an MKV file that is less than 24 hours old. I was streamed using VLC version 3.0.20 form the repose on Linux.
Your wife is not going to believe it bud.
Every once in a while security researchers would discover sophisticated exploits that would allow malwares to take over your computer via multimedia files, but those are actually rarely exploited in the wild by run off the mill malwares.
Unless you’re an important person being targeted by hackers and three letter agencies, your biggest source of threat is running infected programs from untrusted sources, e.g. cracks downloaded from random torrents or warez sites, shady sites serving ads that trick you to run some executables, etc.
I really hate to be “that person”, but..........it’s “run of the mill”, not “run off the mill”, friend.
It’s a term from the late 1800s that refers to “manufactured goods not graded or sorted for quality—that is, a mill’s products before they’ve been separated according to what will sell for how much.” (Source for quote: https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/where-does-run-of-the-mill-come-from)
Seriously, I’m not trying to be a grammar nazi here. Unless of course that was just autocorrect being a dick, in which case I’ll go walk off a cliff now… :/
I thought I was wrong about the phrase for a minute
Thank you for the correction!
Of course. :) I love learning about etymology and stuff, but I understand language is an evolving phenomenon so I try not to be a dick. Lol, hopefully, I succeeded.
That’s really interesting. Thanks :)
Of course. :)
Wild that people have ESCAPED VMs… but yeah that’s not happening on my boring ass’s computer
Me with SELinux hardened podman in a VM, running an offline Minecraft server😳
Not really, but you can get a virus from movie.mkv.exe, which will probably show up in windows as “movie.mkv” but will actually run a program.
That being said, I’ve never actually seen this in the wild and it was mainly talked about in the mp3 era.
I’ve seen many a ROM be SuperMarioBros3.exe just straight up, but never .nes.exe so idk if that counts.
Afaik, it’s possible for any file to be infected with a virus. Videos themselves can be, and .MKV is a container of other files (video, audio, subtitles). The video source, audio source or even .txt containing the subtitles could be a malicious virus inside the container.
You’re on linux? The odds of you getting a virus on linux are not 0 but very slim, since the userbase is very small.
Plus, viruses prey on people’s ignorance. The usual “movie file viruses” are .exe files and can only be run on windows. Most people don’t enable the option to show file extensions on windows, so a filed named “movie.mkv.exe” would show up as “movie.mkv” instead.
IMO, the odds of you accidentally running a virus by playing a .mkv file on linux are as high as the odds of you winning the lottery 3 times in a row.
Thanks for the reassurance. I won’t worry about it. After some thought, I also believe it’s unlikely some one have embed zero-day exploits into a movie torrent from LimeTorrent.
Yeah, zero-days are usually expensive because attackers like to keep them pre zero-days once they are discovered their value diminishes significantly. So they are usually used for high value targets and not on random people downloading movies.
The 3DS got rooted by playing a music file. Anything can happen homie.
There’s imho no stupid questions regarding personal cyber-security. There are only things we don’t know yet.
Like someone else said, it’s unlikely. However it is possible but it would need to exploit your media player (VLC) and/or your OS. As long as your source is trustworthy you shouldn’t have to worry, that’s why the megathread is there.
The mkv file wasn’t form a trustworthy source.
As others have said, it’s technically possible, but it would extremely difficult and would require coordinating a lot of different variables which is extremely unlikely. I’m not sure there’s actually ever been an example of this type of attack outside of a lab.
Just make sure the file doesn’t have a double extension. That can trick people into running a .exe when the file extension is hidden. That’s really only a problem on windows though.
You’re probably fine it’s extremely unlikely. Dont trust emails that say they recorded you wanking its a scam
Send them back a clip of you wanking to their email.
I’m gonna go with unlikely.
Depends what you play it through TBH. If a program has access to your memory, then yes. Naturally it’s a nuanced answer and unless you are a security expert that knows exactly how memory is allocated and how elevated privileges work, not to mention all the little bugs, etc. in your system, then the answer is yes. You aren’t really safe from anything that hits your hard drive.
It’s possible to get a virus from any data that enters your computer full stop.
Likelyhood wise: that virus on the MKV will have to attack the operating system preview system (which means you fucked all the way up to personal nation state attention), or attack the video player (which is a lot more likelier, they discover theoretical exploits all the time).
You’re talking about streaming with VLC? Was it a trusted source? Cause otherwise the FBI or script kiddie has probably fucked you up.
theoretically… but no.
if you really only played it and it didn’t abuse some zero day in vlc (extremely unlikely), the there’s basically zero chance you could have activated a virus.
But it’s definitely possible to ship a virus embedded in a playable mkv file, but something else would have to extract it first, for it to do anything
