Can you get a virus from a music CD?

[booshky]

Where I work computer security says you can. Has anybody heard of this? Gomer, yes store bought.Virus scan wont work on music CD's

[This message has been edited by booshky (edited 09-12-2000).]

[Gomer]

Do you mean a store bought one, or one that was burnt? If it was a burnt CD I would have to say yes. It is possible for a file to be opened using the insert notification deal that windows uses to automatically run programs, i.e. games. I imagine it would be pretty easy to setup a virus like that. Never thought about it but seems like a real easy way to put a trojan on someones computer. Maybe I will try.

[dgardner]

Well I am glad I dont live near you gomer, I don't think that is a very nice thing to do, unless they did something to you of course in whihc case go ahead.
I have never heard of viruses on Audio Cd's before, where would you store the data, couldn't use track 1 would be to obvious, in fact if you put data on any track wouldn't the computer recognise it as a data cd not audio????
Regards virus scanning cd's, if you have a network, map the cd-rom of another computer onto yours and scan it that way, dont think it will work on audio cd's though, try it and let me know.

~Dave~

[Gomer]

dgardner,
I would never do anything malicious with the virus. The only one I have the slightest knowledge of using is SubSeven. I only know of that because (thanks to my little brother) we got hit with it. Because of that I investigated it and played around with it. You can not imagine the things you can remotely control with that trojan. Like I said though, I would never do anything horrible with it unless someone had it coming to them. It is great for fooling around with people though

As for data on audio cd's. A good number of audio cd's are called "value added" I think. These cd's have little proggies and pics and what not that can be viewed with a computer. When you put them in the drive, they automatically start the interface for showing these additional files. You must have "auto insert notification" turned on in windows for this to happen. Otherwise you must manually start the program.

I don't have any idea how virus scanners handle these types of cd's. But if someone is naive enough to not run a scanner it seems like an easy way to infect them because nothing needs to be done for the file to load. Windows will start it right up. Most computer literate people know no to run unknown .exe's and whatnot. However, I bet few worry about throwing that burnt cd someone lent them into their drive. I never did before at least. hehe "Sure you can borrow my copy of office =)"

[dgardner]

I have had some of those cd's which are value added, but they tend to store the data on the last track (which cannot be accessed or recognised by a audio cd player) but when I have put them in my computer it has recognised them as data cd's and runs the autorun file on the cd and started their software. I understand sort of what your saying, but regarding starting it manually, if the files cannot be viewed by the computer how can you manually start the program??? (am I getting the wrong end of the stick??). Also the autorun feature is a very easy one to abuse when making your own cd's, I have on a few occasions for a laugh with my cd's. Some when you put them in start up an HTML menu as well which is great!!

Well thanks for filling us in.

~Dave~

[qball]

The question is a little ambiguous, so here goes.

Technically, yes, you can get a virus from a store bought CD, as shown in the post above.

Specifically, if you place a CD in a CD drive and access a track through some sort of music software (winamp, WMP), you should be able to get a virus without the software being involved. The reason being, the track is being read and output, there is no processing of the data, there is no execution of the data.

If software or OS level settings (autorun) affect the CD media, the chance for virus is possible. If the data is merely accessed as read-only, something else needs to be involved to cause problems.