Is anyone experiencing problems with viruses when downloading epubs? Last three books I've tried to download, via chrome, a message appears indicating the file has "malicious files".
Is Chrome being overly careful or is this a real problem?
Cheers

me too...especially if you try to download it from 'dailyuploads'

me too...especially if you try to download it from 'dailyuploads'

It's odd. Should we NOT download? Damn!

It's not just dailyuploads. I've had it happen recently with Tusfiles and another site. It's not epubs in general, it's what is embedded in an epub file. Nothing to worry about because Chrome will "dismiss" the upload and not write it to your device. However I notify the poster via PM since they are the ones who know (hopefully) where they got the file.

[Fizban]

Why in the world would anyone embed a virus in an epub file? To the best of my knowledge even though an epub is a glorified html file there is no way for scripts to run inside of it so what would be the point of embedding a virus inside of one?

Or do you mean the epub files are in archives like .zip or .rar and some accompanying file in the archive is a virus?

Who said anything about embeding a virus in an ePub? Virtually any file carry exploit code. If the PC has the vulnerability that the exploit targets then the PC downloads and executes malware.

ePubs are NOT "glorified" (whatever that means) HTML files. An ePub is a ZIP file of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It could certainly contain code that attempts to force the install of malware, including viruses.

It’s not difficult to spread malware ebooks. A popular title gets released, the malware writer acquires a copy, either by buying and breaking the DRM or by pirating, and infects the copy with malware javascript. They post the malware ebook onto a download site popular with ebook pirates and wait as people infect their own computers.

[Fizban]

I have to admit that I have never before heard of malware or viruses spread through epubs. After reading your response I did find one site by Baldur Bjarnason that talked about javascript security in epubs and how malware inside them could be an issue if the device/app being used to read an epub has network access.

Interesting reading. You'd think there'd be a lot more sites talking about the issue if it is becoming a problem.

You're right - you'd think so. I think the malware "providers" go where the volume is and that isn't epubs, it's websites and apps. Also, I've never heard of problems with ebooks downloaded from the retail sites like Amazon, BN, etc. so naturally why would anyone feel bad for, ahem, pirates.

Hmm, I hope I haven't been infected then :S

[stanley123]

I have a question about avoiding these viruses with a premium account: is it better to use the blue arrows or paste the url into the premium account downloader?

In the past month, I've had malwarebytes and bitdefender each block a malicious web page when using the downloader. Malwarebytes from zippyshare and bitdefender from hugefiles. I thought that the downloader worked the say the blue arrows do, the file is downloaded to mobilism which then prompts the user to start the actual download?

Confused. Please advise.

Thanks.

Stan