this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
61 points (98.4% liked)
Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
54500 readers
575 users here now
⚓ Dedicated to the discussion of digital piracy, including ethical problems and legal advancements.
Rules • Full Version
1. Posts must be related to the discussion of digital piracy
2. Don't request invites, trade, sell, or self-promote
3. Don't request or link to specific pirated titles, including DMs
4. Don't submit low-quality posts, be entitled, or harass others
Loot, Pillage, & Plunder
📜 c/Piracy Wiki (Community Edition):
💰 Please help cover server costs.
 |
 |
|---|---|
| Ko-fi | Liberapay |
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Hypothetically yes. But consider that much like a virus growing in a petri dish, it needs an appropriate environment. A mp4/mkv/whatever file sitting on your hard drive that you never access is not going to be problematic. Even when you do access it, it is probably is not going to do anything unless you also open it in the viewer that the malware author intended the payload for. There is no general purpose video decoding malware. They target the players.
as a reminder: in systems on Linux, remember to check the permissions of non executable files if you're extracting them from a zip folder or similar, since those tends to preserve file permissions before you double-click them.
Also for Linux: If you're paranoid about getting hit by a video-player exploit, I think you could thwart most attempts by throwing your player into firejail (maybe a properly configured flatpak could also do the trick?)
oh there is a way without the user accessing it espcially on Windows: Anti virus scanner
since most of them scan all downloaded files a zero day exploit for these software might be automatically executed
bonus points: Anti virus software typically has system permissions too
(likelyhood is still hilariously low)
You made me think about it a little more, and there's one more thing, for the GUI based filemanagers of any operating system: thumbnail generation might also be able to be targeted