VideoLan.org is the official website for downloading famous VLC media player, VLMC & other professional & developer projects. This popular website is displaying a ruinous warning in Bing, an internet search engine which is owned & operated by Microsoft.

The warning is displayed when users hover the cursor over the first hyperlink on the page: VLC media player – Official Site. It states “Site might be dangerous” followed by another baleful warning that “it could lead you to malicious software that can harm your device”.

VLC media player is a renowned free, open-source & portable media server that is capable of playing almost all multimedia files & DVDs, VCDs & Audio DCs. This cross-platform multimedia player is widely used by people from all over the world as it is free & available for desktop operating systems & mobile platforms like Android, Windows, iOS & Tizen. In addition to that, it can be downloaded from any digital distribution platform such as Google Play Store, Microsoft Store & Apple’s App Store.

According to a report by Avast, VLC media player ranked 7^th among the list of most installed programs of 2017.

The warning displaying on Bing was culminated on 27^thNovember2018 after official Twitter account for VideoLan.org tweeted that Microsoft’s search Engine, Bing is exhibiting a pop-up caution that the site for VLC is dangerous & contains malicious software.

Bing Site Safety Report rolled the status for VideoLan.org URL https://www.videolan.org/vlc & classified it as suspicious due to certain indications of malicious activity on site.

Our search for VLC in Bing showed the same warning as we hovered the cursor over the first search result.

VLC at the target of Malware Distributors

One of the most common tactics implemented by malware distributors is to confiscate renowned free & open-source software and repackage them so as to install malware.

For an instance, most of the adware programs will repackage VLC deliberately as a “mandate” player, which will further install unwanted & disastrous, more adware, malicious extensions & Trojans.

VLC is also known to have been used by threat actors to spread advanced malware like FinFisher. VLC was once used to weaponize certain applications to spy on the targets & used as a prominent part of CIA Vault 7 cyber toolkit named as “Fine Dining”. VLC media player ranks among the lengthy list of applications that were apparently used by the CIA.

Here are some of other renowned applications that were reportedly armed by CIA:

1. Chrome Portable
2. Opera Portable
3. Firefox Portable
4. McAfee Stinger Portable
5. Opera Mail
6. Skype
7. Foxit Reader
8. SanDisk Secure Access

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