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zCodec Video Codec Is a Trojan

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the who-is-watching-whom? dept.

Bride of Chucky writes "There's a new video codec out there that claims to offer 'up to 40 percent better video quality' but that resets your computer's DNS settings — opening the way for Trojans, rootkits, or whatever. Techworld warns that zCodec looks professional enough, is widely available, and comes in at 100KB. What's the bet the media companies are behind this somewhere?"

1 of 188 comments (clear)

  1. Appears to be from Inhoster, known spyware source. by Animats · · Score: 5, Informative

    Looks like this is coming from a known source of spyware in Ukraine, "Inhoster.com".

    "zcodec.com" is actually "85.255.117.106-xbox.dedi.inhoster.com", a dedicated server at a "nlayer.net" colocation site in San Francisco. The dedicated server appears to be associated with "atrivo".

    Both "inhoster.com" and "atrivo" appear to be "psuedo-ISPs"; they have web sites that look like those of an ISP, but they don't really offer services for sale. Both have bad reputations: see "Spywarequake Scam on the Run. The previous attacks were based on phony anti-spyware programs. Now that people are wise to that one, the new frontier is apparently phony codecs.

    The WHOIS information for "zcodec.net" appears to be bogus. It's given as "Abrahamen Biderman" at "5624 17th Ave, Brooklyn, New York" There is an "Abraham Biderman" with an office at 5624 17th Ave, Brooklyn, New York, and he's a political figure and investment banker, with a career running major financial institutions. Probably not behind some two-bit spyware scam.