VLC. One of the most popular media players on the planet has a very big problem at the moment, and that's because major vulnerabilities in it have allowed computers to be hacked using .avi and .mkv format movies. The company behind VLC has admitted that its software has been compromised by hackers, who can inject viruses into the movies in .avi and .mkv format, and when accessing them, users' computers can be hacked.
VLC. The vulnerabilities allow hackers to run unsigned code with full administrator privileges, and from here they have full access to controlling the computer, including remotely, without the users knowing. A new version of the VLC program has been released by the developers of the application to solve the problems, the 3.0.7 containing the changes that keep everyone safe, and it must be installed right now if you use the program on PC.
VLC. CAREFUL! Movies Used to BREAK Your Computer
VLC. No one can imagine how the program ended up with vulnerabilities of this kind, but it is very clear that the developers behind the application were not very careful about what they did for consumers. The two discovered vulnerabilities could be exploited through movies in .avi or .mkv format that seemed to be completely normal, without the users realizing that they would exploit VLC to control their computers.
"A remote user can create some specially crafted avi or mkv files that, when loaded by the target user, will trigger a heap buffer overflow (read) in ReadFrame (demux/avi/avi.c), or a double free in zlib_decompress_extra( ) (demux/mkv/utils.cpp) respectively. If successful, a malicious third party could trigger either a crash of VLC or an arbitration code execution with the privileges of the target user."
VLC. Despite the huge problem that this discovery brings, the good part is that only computers are affected, not phones, because that would complicate things even more for the company. VLC has over 3 billion downloads recorded worldwide to date, so we are talking about an extremely popular program, but which is not quite as safe as the world imagines.
VLC. Having said that, you can update the VLC program right from its interface, and I recommend that you do so, because you are exposed to extremely high risks at the moment, without knowing it.
