Lame mp3 download page - Virus warning from McAfee

[JeffB]

I followed the link from the Audacity FAQ: Installation & Plug-Ins page http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/FAQ: ... g-Ins#lame to install Lame, but got a dire warning from McAfee that it contained a virus etc. (see attachment)

I saw another thread or two on here about similar issues, such as this one indicating it may have been a banner ad or an issue with ESET:

http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... us#p165884

But in this case, I had already downloaded the FFMPEG file from the same page, and the warning didn't pop up until I tried to download LAME.

I downloaded it anyway, opened the folder and scanned the downloaded file with McAfee. It said there were no problems with it.

In that thread Gale Andrews offered another site to download it:

http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 30#p165930

I went there as well and downloaded it. McAfee didn't pop up any warning this time. The file was also the same 516 k size as the previous one. The checksums are also identical, and I scanned both with McAfee and both times came back with a clean scan.

So I'm guessing there are really no problems with the file, but for some reason the site linked to from the Audacity pages is also setting off alarms at McAfee.

[kozikowski]

Sometimes a web site or system will do something to get on a black list and [choose your deity] could post something and it would get flagged as Spam. This happened to our corporate system once. It was not pretty.

Koz

[steve]

As you are probably aware there are copyright issues in some countries regarding MP3 encoding technology and for these reasons Audacity cannot be shipped with MP3 encoding capability. Buanzo hosts builds of LAME and FFMpeg that work in Audacity on a server in Argentina where it is legal to do so. As you can probably imagine, with millions of Audacity users downloading LAME (and FFMpeg) there are significant costs, particularly for the bandwidth. The costs are offset by advertising.

As Internet advertising is largely automated there is always a risk that from time to some third party advertiser may link to something naughty which can trigger "dangerous site" warnings. McAfee will be on alert simply because you are downloading an executable (a program) so it does not take much to trigger an alarm.

There is a contact e-mail for Buanzo at the top of the download page, so in the event that anyone does find that any of the adverts contain malware he can be contacted and will take immediate action to remove it.

You can find Buanzo's response to the previous time this issue came up, here: http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... 95#p165895
I've just run multiple checks on the LAME download page and it looks fine - no sign of any malware or viruses, but thanks for your report - it is important to be vigilant about malware and viruses.

[JeffB]

Thanks. I figured it was something like that. I've heard of companies getting unfairly flagged by anti-spamware sites, along the lines of what Mr. kozikowski mentioned, and have had a tough time getting things straightened out. I figured the files themselves were fine, but thought I'd bring it up in case it was an ongoing issue that could be corrected if someone found out about it. I imagine it's one of those things that can't be fixed though, as they're trying to harrass him for what he's doing, unfortunately.

Thanks again for everything.

[kozikowski]

It's not always evil. Freshmen college roommate projects don't all grow up to be Facebook and Google. Some of them grow up to be spam rating agencies with everybody slapping each other on the back and high-fives all around how smoothly the algorithms run -- by themselves.

Oh, wait. You mean there's an error -- somewhere in the billions of listings? Generated by an algorithm?

I'm betting the next call on hold over from you and your innocent error is an actual spammer bent on getting his project to sell vitamin supplements released from the very same blacklist.

I bet the developers wish they had taken up dirt farming.

Koz