Kazaa Delivers More Than Tunes [45% of Files have Virus]

Wired News ^ | 1/9/04 | Kim Zetter

[freedom44]

Forty-five percent of the executable files downloaded through Kazaa, the most popular file-sharing program, contain malicious code like viruses and Trojan horses, according to a new study.

Out of 4,778 files downloaded in one month, Bruce Hughes, director of malicious code research at security firm TruSecure, found that nearly half of them contained various types of nefarious code.

[wimpycat]

.poor girl...your missing out on alot needless to say ..any kind of application you'd want...

LOL! Aaaaanny-teeeng I want, huh? You make it sound so dirty! I might catch some sort of disease! You don't know where that file's been. Download a file, and you download every computer that file has been with...EWWWW!

[AAABEST]

This is exactly why we should be careful when taking liberties with titles.

If you're not sure of what you're typing don't effen type.

See # 18

[Viking2002]

I've had several viruses try to bite me via Kazaa downloads. As long as you have a good, real-time antivirus program running with updated .dat files, you should be OK.

[wimpycat]

Hey, no Anti-Virus software is 100% effective. Abstinence is the best anti-virus...

[Tunehead54]

The title says 45% of files have virus, but the body of the story says he only tested .exe files. That calls into question anything else in the story. You deserve a virus if you download executable files.

---

Exactly. Thanks for saving me the typing. ;-)

[wimpycat]

The very first line in the article specifies executable files. So the original title is not misleading, but the comments in brackets might make it so.

[The Great RJ]

The viruses are only the half of it. I have helped friends clean up after Kazaa and found literally hundreds of spyware and mal-ware programs installed on their computers not only compromising their privacy, but also dragging their Internet connections to a crawl. Some of the mal-ware programs were actually Trojan Horses that later opened their computers to hacker attack.

If you or your kids have used Kazaa or similar file sharing programs get rid of them and run Ad Aware or Spy-Bot to clean up the spyware and then run the latest update of your anti-virus program and finally install a good firewall like Zone Alarm.

[bwteim]

Thanks for article, however, your amended title is misleading.

It seems to imply that the music files, which most would tend to associate with Kazaa due to recent news, have viruses... which is not the point of the article.

[Quick1]

Forty-five percent of the executable files downloaded through Kazaa,

Any reason you didn't include this whole statement in the headline?

It's impossible for .mp3 files to have a virus. As far as I can tell, it's impossible for any movie format file (.avi, .mpeg, etc.) to have a virus, either. Why? Because you're not executing the file itself, you're executing the file through a player like WinAmp or Windows Media Player.

Considering most people download only movies and mp3 files, I'd say there's really nothing to worry about, especially if you have a half decent virus scanner.

[metalboy]

Just about every file has a virus...Sounds like a Hitlery excuse.

[Quick1]

Give KaZaa Lite a spin. I won't include a link for obvious reasons, but it's easy to find via Google. KaZaa Lite is completely spyware-free.

[Pan_Yans Wife]

I thought headlines were headlines... the one that the writer gave to the copy.

[Quick1]

I meant the part of the headline that was added on by the poster, in the brackets. It was quite misleading.

[Pan_Yans Wife]

Yeah, but it is done all the time on FR... the addition is always in brackets. I thought this was kind of overlooked.

[Quick1]

Yes, it's overlooked, because when people post a fact from the article, they tend to post the actual fact, instead of making something up themselves. I don't mind that he added on, it's the content of what he added on that I object to.

[Pan_Yans Wife]

Well, I don't know that I can agree about the characterization of the "fact adding". But, maybe FR will change its unspoken guidelines.

It could just be that the poster made an error.

[reagan_fanatic]

"However, if you download software, you should have an industrial-strength condom on your PC"



Would this help?

[rwfromkansas]

Embedded in the article is the fact that this only refers to software downloads. It is not possible to infect the other files.

[rwfromkansas]

Yep; I did some testing of my own, and the viruses were caught. You just find something that isn't infected, which isn't hard.

[rwfromkansas]

If you try to download security software off of Kazaa, you are one cheapo! Plus, the hackers get their kicks trying to infect the security software.....