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.
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… :/
Thank you for the correction!
I thought I was wrong about the phrase for a minute
Wild that people have ESCAPED VMs… but yeah that’s not happening on my boring ass’s computer
Your wife is not going to believe it bud.
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.
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.
theoretically… but no.
There’s imho no stupid questions regarding personal cyber-security. There are only things we don’t know yet.
someone please correct me if I’m wrong but I believe that for it to be possible, the application that plays the mkv file would have to have a remote execution exploit and the code for the virus would be executed through the player. the player would be required to have elevated privileges. I think this is exceptionally unlikely for vlc
The player does not have to be elevated. With an unelevated player the file exploiting such a vuln would be able to execute code with the privileges and access of the player
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.
I’m gonna go with unlikely.
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.
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.
