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One of my friends tried to send me some recordings they had made. I tried downloading them (in Hotmail), but it said they contained an uncurable virus and it wouldn't allow me to download it. I eventually got them sent on msn a few days later and they seemed fine. Any ideas what that was all about?

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:3145, old post ID:25709

I don't think it's possible for a wav file to be a virus since it's not executable. But I guess it could still be corrupted and have the virus put into it, but opening it would not execute the virus. I guess there could be exeptions such as wmp exploits or something. But if it plays fine it's probably safe. probably...

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:3145, old post ID:25710

What Red said

Plus, virus are identified by small "signature" strings. Who's to say this are globally uniuqe? A virus definition could contain an inaccurate string and cause software to think its a virus, but it might just be harmless.

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:3145, old post ID:25712

Well there are such things as viruses in media files, as Red mentioned the wmp exploits, and there was also reports of mp3 viruses a while back. But as the files themselves are not executable, the problem, the exploit, lies within the player, not the file, so if your version of winamp or whatever you use to play the file is up to date, you should be ok.

Most likely it's a false positive. Either a small part of the file is malformed, enough to put hotmail on alert, but not enough to inhibit playback. Or part of the file's code looks similar to that of a virus, but is completely coincidental. Kinda like what Cold Drink said. It's rare, but it happens.

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:3145, old post ID:25717