The scammers are at it agan.
If you come across a video file which, on playback, shows you this:
Beware! It’s yet another form of the old DivoCodec scam, this time with a new twist.
If you’re familiar with the DivoCodec scam, you probably vaguely recognize the screenshot. It’s surprising how predictable these crooks are: They choose the same color scheme for their bullshit title screens every time. Red and white text on a black background.
In case this is your first visit, here’s the quick and dirty rundown: This is a trick to try to make you install infected software on your system. The PlayVix “player” they are offering is highly likely to be spyware, or to quietly load and install spyware while running. Also, the information they force you to submit before downloading the player will be sold on. At minimum, you open your e-mail address to a flood of spam.
The way these bastards usually work, you still won’t get to watch the movie you expected to. If there is any content in there at all, it will probably be tranny porn or something uninteresting taped off TV. April Fools!
So don’t do it. You’ll be compromising your computer with no benefits.
Technicalities:
These videos come masked as AVI files, but are actually ASF/WMV files renamed. They make use of the DRM (Digital Rights Management) encryption already mentioned in another blog.
WARNING!
Since the DRM mechanism installed in Windows Media Player offers to contact the content publisher (read: criminals) and purchase a “licence” for the content at the publisher’s site, this is another way for the scammers to get you. The DRM mechanism is vulnerable to hack attacks, and your computer may become silently hi-jacked in the process. So don’t do that either. Read my previous post on the DRM scan to find out why it’s dangerous.
My advice is to try another torrent for the content you wanted to see. And, please, stop seeding any video file which behaves this way. Don’t help snare other unsuspecting victims.
Can this format be cracked?
I’m not yet sure, but my hopes aren’t high. The main content, if there is any, may make use of the DRM encryption system, which is notoriously hard to crack, if it can be done at all. So, unlike the previous formats, I probably can’t extend my UnZixWin app to extract the hidden content. But I’ll keep snooping and pondering the problem. Any feedback with any details is welcome here.