Official forum for Utopia Community
You are not logged in.
Pages: 1
Hello all,
I have a question about mediafire. I am interested in downloading a file from there, which itself seems legitimate. It is a demo version of an upcoming Titanic PC game. ("Honor and Glory".) When hovering over the "download" button on the game website, (http://www.titanichg.com/demo/), I'm presented with a link to Mediafire, which is ".../download/0h8x0ukru7y1pbr/Titanic+-+Honor+and+Glory+Demo.zip"
I have heard of some security flaws in the site, and read reports about numerous infections taking place there, drive-by downloads and such. I usually stay away from sites like this, although in this case, this file seems to be from a legitimate developer. What I am concerned about though is the possibility of picking up some malware from the site in general, or that the file, or its page, since its upload, may have been injected with something malicious.
Does this seem like a secure thing to do, or is there a substantial risk of malware here? Any input is appreciated.
Offline
mediafire itself shouldn't be a problem however the fact that the file is hosted there does not seem right if it is from an official developer. Although the download page might* be ok, I strongly suspect that if you download the file and then run it the file will turn out to be a virus.
*There are often adverts on mediafire download pages, if you use an adblocker and script blocker you are safe from these however if you lack those then you run the risk that the adverts on the download page (like adverts anywhere else) could be used for drive-bys. This isn't a rpoblme specific to mediafire, it's a problem on many websites including large legitimate sites, often major sites (like news websites for exmaple) end up displaying** adverts around the corner which are used like this. This risk is real enough, but in your circumstances I suspect the risk from the file itself will be even greater.
**many major sites work with major ad networks, major ad networks get adverts from smaller ad networks, and so on, until somewhere down the chain a very small ad network is tricked into displaying a malvertising advert, this advert is bought by larger and larger networks until it ends up on a major site.
Offline
Thanks for the reply... I checked up on this developer's Facebook page, where I found an excerpt that reads something along these lines... "This demo does NOT have trojans or malware in it, and Mediafire is a reputable site. As long as you download the file properly, there should be no issues... if there is malware somewhere, it's not from us."
That doesn't sound too reassuring to me.
Offline
No, it doesn't. When people providing files for download "SHOUT" about how those files are NOT infected, they are generally lying. If a reputable developer had hosted a file somewhere they wouldn't bother to shout about how it didn't have malware in it, in the unlikely event that a reputable developer's program set off a false positive on an antivirus the develoepr wouldn't post a warning saying "ignore your antivirus my file is safe", rather he would post a note like "Users with Example antivirus may find this file sets off a detection, I have contacted Example to report this as a false positive. Users seeing the file to be a virus should wait for the next set of definition updates from Example and then they should be able to download without problems.".
As for medifire itself, I wouldn't say it is an "unreputable" site, it has some problems with adverts however running an adblocker takes care of these, but it is a site to which anyone can upload anything (for private backups or for sharing with the world, I use it myself as a secondary online private backup for my less private files), so files hosted on it are as reputable or not as their uploader, in this case the uploader sounds suspicious.
Ah, and finally. As far as I know, Utopia has a data warehouse, a secure replacement for Google Drive. Pay attention : ubox
Last edited by HanBaoCinch (2021-02-08 15:31:21)
Offline
No, it is absolutely not safe. Choose something else
Offline
the file can be "charged" with anything. Be careful.
Offline
Pages: 1