How Secure Is VLC Media Player? A Guide to Identifying and Resolving Potential Threats

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Is VLC Media Player Safe? How to Fix VLC Security Vulnerability?

Posted by Amanda Hu | Last updated: April 30, 2020

Is VLC safe for Mac or Windows 10? You may have heard that it’s safe and also heard it’s malicious. Sadly, VLC is not safe at least in old versions. That has been proved by the VLC 3.0.4 update log which has highlighted the security issues to tell you the truth that VLC media player is not safe. Well, never mind, nothing is perfect. Now that you know the truth, you may wonder what security issues annoy and how to solve “VLC is not safe”.

Why VLC Media Player Is Not Safe?

Though VLC is an open source media player that everybody including the unkind has the chance to redefine it, VLC download from the official site is commonly clean without extra elements. However, it is hard to say your VLC is perfect and safe enough.

Recently, German Cybersecurity Agency Identifies Critical Flaw in VLC Media Player
From Neowin news on July 20, 2019, German Cybersecurity Agency, CERT-Bund, has recently discovered the exploit that may allow attackers to not only execute code remotely but also allows for unauthorized disclosure of information, unauthorized modification of files and disruption of service. (Read more: https://www.neowin.net/news/german-cybersecurity-agency-identifies-critical-flaw-in-vlc-media-player )

VLC from 3rd-party Download Site May Be not Safe
Whichever software you download from third-party or unauthorized sites, it may encounter security issues. It is often the case that the unknown sites will utilize VLC reputation to advertise, and even worse they make the software malicious. Therefore, you’d better not download VLC media player from such sites.

VLC is not Safe Because of Vulnerabilities
VideoLAN had reported that there were several vulnerabilities in the program in the past. Though these vulnerabilities were caused by bugs and not dangerous in themselves, they provided a possible opportunity for malicious files to damage normal media files and attack the computer. For example, VideoLAN had reported VLC vulnerabilities involving WAV audio files and CD audio tracks, which may be one of the reasons to VLC audio delay problem. Though VLC developers has tried their best to improve VLC media player, it is hard to avoid every vulnerability perfectly.

VLC May Download Hacker’s Subtitles
No matter the security issue of VLC first reported with the 0.8.6d version in 2008 when there was buffer overflow exploited by mail intended individuals while loading a subtitle file, or the one reported in 2017 that VLC user has downloaded malicious subtitles which helps hacker to remote control the computer, smartphone, tablet or smart TV by manipulating the subtitle text files, it tells us that VLC is no that safe. Obviously, this is not the fault of VLC media player, but this causes the security issue of VLC indeed.

How to Solve the “VLC not Safe” Problem?

1. Download VLC Media Player from the official site or authorized site at the first step, please. Still worry? You can have a test for the downloaded VLC with anti-virus and anti-malware programs or services to check if the downloaded VLC software is safe enough to install on your device.

2. Upgrading your VLC to the latest version is the best and easiest choice, of course. VLC has claimed that version 3.0.4 has fixed the security issues along with the fix of hardware decoding issue, support for AVI stream and improve the compatibility with numerous formats.

3. Uninstall VLC media player and try VLC media player alternative to prevent VLC not safe issue. Here, we recommend 5KPlayer as the best free VLC alternative that is safe for Mac/Windows 10 as well as accurate for HD 4K media playback. It is completely free and supports almost all files formats like VLC without the need of downloading additional codecs. Also, this VLC alternative supports DLNA streaming, online media download and convert , and add subtitles to videos movies.

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