zCodec Video Codec Is a Trojan

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?"

Comments

Rather than the conspiracy theory.

[Spazntwich]

I'd give a lot more consideration to an enterprising spammer/botnet advertiser being behind this.

Follow the money. The MPAA has plenty to make off p2p lawsuits to risk the kind of bad press and fines they'd get by doing something like this.

Basically, the submitter is an irrational idiot pandering to the anarchist conspiracy theorists in an attempt to start a flamewar. Congratulations, you've probably got it.

Re:Rather than the conspiracy theory.

[MustardMan]

While I agree that the submitter is probably full of shit... your argument is kind of weak. Try a little word-replacement and see what you get...

"Follow the money. Sony has plenty to make off hardware and music sales to risk the kind of bad press and fines they'd get by installing a rootkit on your computer"

Sony makes a whole fuckload more money from their products than the MPAA gets from suing grandmothers, and that sure didn't stop them from one of the biggest PR blunders by a tech company in recent memory.

It's far more likely that a script kiddie or spammer type is responsible... but I would NOT put this sort of thing past the shitbags at the MPAA.

Huh?

[WD]

What are "the media companies" and why would they be behind this?

Hmm.

[TheRaven64]

What's the bet the media companies are behind this somewhere?

A tin-foil hat is a mark of someone who can, in all seriousness, say 'if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it must be a concealed listening device placed by the government under the instruction of the military-industrial complex and funded by the media industry.' The poster should wear his with pride.

No need for conspiracies...

[AgentPaper]

...user stupidity makes a dandy explanation. If there is a universal truth in today's networked world, it is that the gullibility of the average Netizen knows no bounds. I'd be willing to bet that you could write a program that claims to turn your printer into a replicator, and some doofus would buy it.

This ranks right up there with the scores of malware programs that pretend to be malware removers. I assume the original poster would have us believe that all those are really written by the likes of Symantec and McAfee?

Oh please...

[kentrel]

What's the bet the media companies are behind this somewhere?

That's incredibly presumptuous and a completely baseless accusation. There are lots of people who can clearly benefit from trojans, and someone obviously has seen the potential in video codecs as a nice "social engineering" way of fooling the gullible masses into downloading them. The average person generally searches for video codecs once in a blue moon - they have no way of knowing which sites are legitimate, or which files are legitimate. They'll download whatever sounds promising. In fact, the website looks far more legitimate than some of the genuine codec sites out there.

Smarter users might do regular intensive searching to make sure they are getting a legitimate file, but the average user will not. It's far more likely that the author of this trojan is just exploiting the fact that so many users of codecs are clueless than yet another paranoid conspiracy that the media companies are behind it. Really, will the slashdot editors ever get over their bias and just print actual NEWS.

Re:What!

[gEvil (beta)]

From the summary: "zCodec looks professional enough..."

So I clicked on the zcodec.com link above and the first thing I noticed was the use of some copyrighted movie posters on their page. And then I saw the link for the "therms of use." "Professional enough" indeed...