virus from .mp3?

[ghost2003]

I just got soulseek and wanna DL all I can before it becomes illegal again here :( I just wanted to know if its possible to get a virus from a .mp3 file since I heard that there was a virus that infected text files so I got to thinking, why not mp3's?

[pam123]

The answer is yes.
Furthermore the nasty folks at the RIAA think they're entitled to seed P2P files with "gotchas!".
So back up everything, update virus, and take your chances while it's still legal.

[ghost2003]

How do those work anyways? they arnt executables, wouldnt the computer just try to turn the code into sound and nothing else?

[pam123]

They work the same way drive-by downloads works.
We're talking stealth.

[ghost2003]

If I make sure the file I D/L is about the same size as the others with the same song in them do I have less chance of getting a virus?

[Ares]

This was discussed recently in the soulseek msg boards. To quote one of the moderators there:

"it's impossible to get a virus from an mp3."

Someone mentioned an exe (virus) that was renamed intentionally to be an mp3. To that, the same moderator addressed the issue with this:

"but we aren't running macs! so if some person renamed britney.exe to britney.mp3, and some other person double-clicked it, they would just get an error. windows won't execute a file with a .mp3 extension. try to rename slsk.exe to slsk.mp3 and then double-click it**. your mp3 player will generate an error when it tries to play the file, and that's it."

Someone mentioned on that board, as someone just did on this one, that mp3 tags can hide viruses. Posted on the soulseek board is this by the mod:

"i don't think this is correct. again it sounds like you were misinformed ... the Evil New Mac Threat. mp3 files are not executable. they can't do anything."

I personally have never seen a virus in an mp3 file. If it were possible... better yet.. if it were easy to do... most of us would have seen them or come across them by now. An actual virus infested mp3 has yet to be seen or shown. As far as i'm concerned, it's all talk and nothing more. I have yet to see one as do the thousands at the soulseek boards.

[ghost2003]

earlyer I got a mp3 that WMP could not play, said it had a error. Good thing I deleted it and stop other downloads from that person i guess.

[colecifer]

earlier it was sorta possible. There was a flaw in windows where it could be spoofed to make an exe file appear to be an mp3. when you clicked on it the exe would run and no mp3 would play. I'm pretty sure there is a patch out for this though.

[Jaggannath]

Yup, colecifer is right
The worst you'll get is a corrupted mp3, then you just delete it and get a better copy of the song

[ghost2003]

Got like 30 songs and its all great.
EDIT: make that 50+ :eek: