David_B wrote:

> The underweb grows ever more slimy, Microsoft says, as downloads of
> pirated movies, music, software and other media increasingly come
> bearing malware.

http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012...getting-virusy

> The definition covers underground sites where pirated software and
> media are openly exchanged, as well as legitimate websites that make
> shareware or free music files available for public download.

This Micro$oft report seems to want to blur the lines between
music/movies and software.

In the many gb worth of music and movies that I've downloaded from
file-lockers, I haven't come across any files that turned out to be
malware.

It it even possible that when launched from a media-player (such as VLC)
that there exists a class of avi, mp3, flac (etc) malware that can
leverage a player vulnerability and cause it to run arbitrary code?

I'm well aware of the bogus movie files that upon viewing they try to
coax you to download a codec, but they can't in-and-of themselves take
control of your computer - without you helping them.

The websites where file-locker links to music, movies and software (and
ebooks, etc) are freely offered (ie - avaxhome.ws) have message boards
for every offering, and any that are found to be malicious would be
quickly flagged - but I've never seen this for music, movies or TV
shows. This is in contrast to torrent sites where there is often a
barrier to people posting casual, anonymous comments and where movie
files are often fakes.

When it comes to software - I'm not so sure that what can be found on
file-lockers is always the real thing.

For example, would I download this:

http://avaxhome.ws/software/software....0.0.2688.html

???

I don't know. I see no mention of a crack or key-gen. This could
simply be the download package that is freely offered by Avira on their
website, and is useless without a key or serial.