Can downloading a rar file be dangerous

There is a very common misconception associated with zip files. Any file format can contain viruses. However, the virus must either exploit a vulnerability in the file format itself for example, a JPG virus would have to exploit the image file format in order to spread and infect more files or trick the user into executing it so that it can spread to other systems.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record see " Can we get a virus from. Typically, they're created by programs like WinZip or other compression utilities and store collections of various types of compressed files in a single archive. It has become a popular way to distribute content on the internet and there is no way to get a virus from a. These files cannot contain executable code and therefore cannot run programs or execute scripts. There are several types of viruses, and they spread in different ways.

There is a chance you can get a virus from opening or downloading files like. It is very easy to confuse a. Both use the same compression methods, which are just different ways of arranging files in folders to save storage space and make file transfers easier. There are some. The fact is, most of the antivirus software on the Windows operating system does not block the compressed file which has been modified to contain any virus even though it contains a security hole.

Yes, someone could include a virus or malware in a. Even if they don't intend to infect your computer, there can be malicious software on their computer that is automatically included when they create the archive. The compressed files can contain viruses provided the source file was infected with a virus. You can scan inside the.

However, in some cases, it might be better to avoid downloading files that use these compression methods. Like many other computer users, you may wonder if it is really possible to get a virus from a.

The purpose of compression is to take up less space and allow for faster sharing and transferring of data across networks. There is no doubt that internet viruses are becoming more and more common on the web. In fact, t here are hundreds of thousands of new viruses found every year. However, since. Yes, you can get a virus from. There are numerous attacks that make use of these formats. When opening these files, it is important to make sure you open them in a safe environment away from malware or other potential hazards.

Downloading a malware-infected. I can assume that any computer process that opens, scans, previews, formats, or copies a binary object EXE or ZIP doesn't matter may be vulnerable to a zero day attack even if the file isn't opened per se. Files, in and of themselves, cannot execute without some software causing them to run. In other words, until some sort of software tries to interpret the data as code or some particular format, either by accident or intent, they're just random bytes of data that are completely harmless.

Coincidentally, the term "save to hard drive" is a bit misleading, because by the time Thunderbird has downloaded the email, the attachments may already be stored on your hard drive, in the email database file particularly if you're using not using a web-based email system, like Hotmail. To get to the question posed here, assuming Thunderbird saves the file without trying to parse the file in any way, the file will then safely sit there until something else tries to process the data.

All bets are off, however, if you attempt to preview or open the files. As such, I would strongly advise against automatically saving attachments to the hard drive, not because of the risk of infection from files reaching your hard drive, but rather because all unknown files must be treated with utmost caution until they are proven safe; it's likely you'll slip sooner or later and just happen to run that one virus you meant to delete.

Anecdotally, I used to download viruses from BBSes and various websites and read their source code as a matter of expanding my knowledge of how computers worked and how systems were exploited.

Those files sat harmlessly on my computer for ages, until I one day accidentally typed in the name of the virus mirror instead of typing in edit mirror. Thankfully, these days we can just spin up virtual machines to reduce the risk. I'll go against previous answer and say no you can't execute a program inside a Zip file without extracting it first. Windows explorer can open zip files and show it's content but it must decompress the program before execution.

The zip file itself could in theory contain intentionally malformed data that in combination with a software bug can leads to arbitrary code execution. Any program who parses the file metadata or content should be considered potentially at risk. Examples of this includes parsing the file to determine it's datatype and enumarating the archive content. You should set the Security settings of your PC starting with whatever Browser you are using.

In your case, Firefox. This is usually called "On-Access Scanning. I agree with all previous comments, that a virus, trojan or malicious piece of software will not, by itself, pose a threat to any system. The code in itself is dormant until activated. There are circumstances where a vulnerability exists, that will allow otherwise legitimate files to parse information which will lead to files being executed, which will then execute the dormant code.

Such a vulnerability was part of the distribution of the Stuxnet Trojan as discussed in the following articles:. SYS Malware Loader. So while any malicious code in itself is dormant until activated, there are attack vectors vulnerabilities that will allow malicious code to be executed even though totally unexpected.

NO, but So parsing a file to determine its function can lead to an infection of a system if a vulnerability existed in the parsing chain. It's true that zero-day could happen with any activity that causes a CPU cycle that consumes the file's content as data source.

For example: it could happen when Thunderbird is saving the file to disk, if Thunderbird has a zero-day in file saving process. It could even happen when your anti-virus is scanning the file if your anti-virus has zero-day and they target it. But, since these zero-days are valuable and quickly fixed when known, I wouldn't expect them to be at the hands of regular malware writers the ones who keeps sending you those phishing emails with malware.

They simply rely on simple user clicks. That being said, if this computer is in a critical company that could be targeted, then that's a different story. Otherwise, you can ignore it. If you want to be extra careful, turn off the auto-download feature.

This assumes you are keeping your critical i. This is because once zero-day becomes a public knowledge, it becomes accessible to average malware writers too. That's usually not a concern if you're keeping your software up-to-date.

So yes, there is a risk, I admit it :. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. One of the ways Windows Defender keeps your computer safe from internet evils is by employing its SmartScreen tool to keep you from downloading potentially harmful files or visiting malicious sites. On some occasions, however, you may find SmartScreen overstepping its bounds and blocking you from downloading a file you know to be safe. I don't recommend turning SmartScreen off completely because it is helpful in preventing you from downloading a malicious file or app, but you can disable it in Microsoft's Edge browser if you want to override its protection and go ahead and download a file it doesn't recognize.

You can disable SmartScreen in the Windows Defender Security Center app in total or just for Edge, but for the latter it's faster to do so right within Edge itself, particularly if you are already using Edge. Here's how to toggle SmartScreen off and on in Edge:.