Symantec's Security Threat Intelligence blog mentions the following statement. One of these tools is a modified version of the popular open source media player, VLC. Hackers distributed a modified version of VLC to use it for triggering a custom malware loader The hackers use various tools in addition to a custom loader, and a backdoor called Sodamaster. Attackers are targeting victims via Microsoft Exchange Servers in unpatched system deployments, to gain access to their machines. It was active in February 2022, and could still be ongoing. The malware attack campaign, called Cicada or APT10, was first tracked last year. Symantec says that the campaign primarily targeted victims in government-related institutions or NGOs in education and religion, telecom, legal and pharmaceutical sectors. Additionally, keep your anti-virus up to date so that it is ready to combat any viruses if it ever came across one.The Broadcom-owned company, which makes Norton Antivirus, revealed that a group of hackers, which it claims are affiliated to the Chinese government, were conducting cyber-espionage campaigns targeting organizations across the world.

If you want, you could try players like Media Player Classic, or stick to Windows Media Player, till the VLC Player bug is completely fixed, just to be on the safer side. This includes video or movies downloaded from torrent sites or websites that promote pirated content, or even shared by someone on a pen drive (since you can't make out whether the source of download for that file is trustworthy). Sure, vulnerabilities exist, but what to do when you desperately need to play a video? If you wish to stay safe, just don't play video files from untrusted sources and you're pretty much good to go. Image Courtesy: Reuters VLC Vulnerability: How To Stay Safe? Something similar has happened with VLC in the past as well, but this time the situation seems more grave. VLC has been working on a fix to this glitch for a few weeks now. Surprisingly, no hacker has taken advantage of this glitch as of now. This issue was spotted on the latest versions of VLC running on Windows, Linux and Unix-based systems. So if you're someone who downloads videos or movies illegally using torrentsor through other untrusted sources (which you shouldn't be doing in the first place), you sit right in the centre of the crosshairs. How Hacker Gains Access Through VLC Player?Īccording to the discovery by CERT-Bund, a malicious MKV video file is all a hacker needs to gain access to one's computer.

How Hacker Gains Access Through VLC Player?.

Is vlc media player safe