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zCodec Video Codec Is a Trojan
Posted by
kdawson
on Mon Sep 04, 2006 06:10 PM
from the who-is-watching-whom? dept.
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?"
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Rather than the conspiracy theory. (Score:5, Insightful)
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. (Score:5, Insightful)
"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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly.
We have no evidence for the media corporations being involved in such actions; and it wouldn't make much sense for them to do so, either. This adware will make money; money is something that media companies already have, but adware companies constantly work to get. What the media companies need is not more money, but to scare people off of using p2p software - and this isn't the way to do that. No,
What! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What! (Score:5, Funny)
But It dosen't run on linux.
Parent
Re:What! (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
Parent
Re: Therms!! Hooray! (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:What! (Score:5, Funny)
http-//www.vcodec.com in it{see last line of 'therms'} to zcodec.com is the best laugh I've had today.
Parent
Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm. (Score:5, Insightful)
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... (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
Come on, mods, it has to be asked (Score:4, Funny)
Oh please... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Send someone to jail (Score:3, Insightful)
Enough is a enough. A message needs to be sent to these bastards. Suing and fines only do so much. They fine these bastards, they file for bankruptcy and its over. They close the company and the fines and suits go away. Can't sue what doesn't exist and current corp. laws protect us from going after personal assets.
Time to bring some real charges against these fuckers and send a few of them to prison for a good long stretch. And I'm not talking 6 months in a jail with 500 hours of community service. I'm talking 10 years in maximum security.
I know some people say the punishment doesn't fit the crime but I think its time it did. If we would have locked up some of them bastards from Sony then I bet this one wouldn't' happen.
and nobody's doing anything.....why? (Score:4, Informative)
ZCodec Inc
Abrahamen Biderman
webmaster@zcodec.com
5624 17th Ave
Brooklyn
New York
NY,11204-1834
Tel. +718.2364275
Creation Date: 23-Dec-2005
Expiration Date: 23-Dec-2006
Okay first of all, it was registered almost a full year ago and second, even now I could probably drive to his house/office (assuming that info is accurate) and arrest him myself faster than the FBI could. Why does everyone always sit around and do nothing when stuff like this happens? Someone should at least give him a call :-) It's not even nigeria this time, how expensive could it be?
No bet... (Score:3, Insightful)
Appears to be from Inhoster, known spyware source. (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 [netrn.net]. 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 [forbes.com], with a career running major financial institutions. Probably not behind some two-bit spyware scam.
thats news - heres a tip (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
I bet PC will (Score:4, Funny)
Why take the detour? (Score:3, Interesting)
Music companies have huge legal departments that can (and do) get their info from ISPs with subpoenas. Trojan distributors are constantly trying to find new ways to push their junk onto your computer, often by paying heavily for 0day exploits.
Who is more likely to buy a "cheap" way to bug your PC?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You mean the famous SlashDot Effect hasn't taken down the meany malware site?
They must have some muscle behind their servers. Should we Digg them too?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
4.2.2.2 (Score:5, Informative)
You've already gotten a reply to your original post that indicates at least one other person has seen this happen to their DNS settings. If I'd never typed in 4.2.2.2 myself, and I had no previous business relationship with Verizon or GTE, I'd call shenanigans. A malware writer needing to disable automatic DNS for some reason would have to specify a replacement IP and 4.2.2.2 is convenient to hard code.
Parent
Re:suprise suprise, another American company (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, there is [google.com]. One of the oddities about New York City is that a mailing address of New York, NY means Manhattan. To properly address something in Brooklyn (and thus for Google Maps to find it) you need to use Brooklyn, NY.
Parent
Re:Use Linux (Score:4, Informative)
Parent