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

thats news - heres a tip

[gsn]

wow a codec is spyware - inconcievable!!! Who the heck told you to download an unheard of codec which you probably didn't need. The vast majority of spyware is around because people download things they don't actually need from an untrusted third party source. I can't begin to count the number of computers I've had to fix because some twit downloaded a codec pack or opened an scr file in their email or downloaded some game crack to pirate a game and found it installed bonzi buddy.

Virtually every bloody codec pack you could download contained spyware/adware - some of them put in by the developers themselves. I've got some lovely versions of Nimo, K-lite and gordian knot to prove it. Hell, DivX pre 5.2 had GAIN in it and if you didn't know where to look on their website you had no way of finding the version without it (it didnt have the encoder so wasn't gain supported) . VLC is all I download for video playback now. If they don't support it I don't need to watch it - I've an flv file convertor for those of you who know how to download the dang yourtube/google videos that vlc cant handle perfectly.

Learnt the hard way not to download things from any third party site even if its trusted back in high school. I run XP because I like playing games. If I had a tinfoil hat I'd read the source and then compile and do MD5 checks but I'm lazy and will take the binary packages, and I suspect one day I will pay for that laziness, despite my use of Tea Timer and the Spybot S&D hosts file and immunization databse, Lavasofts ad aware, windows defender and rootkit revealer, hijack this, peer guardian 2, and spyware blaster. One day I will be an idiot and download a binary with some spyware that is still under the radar for all of these and I will be pissed when I realize it. Atleast, I will realize it, but most users wont.