VLC Media Player Banned In India

One of the most popular media player software and streaming media server VLC media player, developed by VideoLAN project, is no longer working in India. India Today reports: As per a report by MediaNama, VLC Media Player has been blocked in India nearly 2 months ago. Neither the company nor the Indian government has revealed any details about the ban. Some reports suggest that VLC Media Player has been blocked in the country because the platform was China-backed hacking group Cicada was using it for cyber attacks. Just a few months ago, security experts discovered that Cicada was using VLC Media Player to deploy a malicious malware loader as part of a long-running cyber attack campaign.

Since it was a soft ban, neither the company, nor the Indian government officially announced the banning of the media platform. Some users on Twitter are still discovering the restrictions of the platform. One of the Twitter users by the name Gagandeep Sapra tweeted a screenshot of the VLC website that shows âoethe website has been blocked as per order Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology under IT Act, 2000." Currently, the VLC Media Player website and download link are blocked in the country. In simple words, this means that no one in the country can access the platform for any work. This is seemingly the case for users who have the software installed on their device. It is said that VLC Media Player is blocked on all major ISPs including ACTFibernet, Jio, Vodafone-idea and others.

Shame they cant also ban

[Anonymous Coward]

Shame they cant also ban
teamviewer, anydesk, desktopcontrol, aamyadmin, supremeadmin, in fact any remote control desktop software.
that alone would save the west billions.

Re:

[higuita]

Sadly don't have moderation points, but this one should get +10 points !

Re:

[pkp413]

VLC, not VNC.

"blocked"

[markdavis]

>"In simple words, this means that no one in the country can access the platform for any work."

Really?

* If you use Linux, it is in every repo and every large media pack. How are they going to block that?
* If you use Android, it is probably still on the store and on third-party "stores."
* There are probably plenty of other reputable places to download it.
* If you have it installed already, it will work.

>"experts discovered that Cicada was using VLC Media Player to deploy a malicious malware loader"

So are we just talking about MS-Windows?

Re:"blocked"

[Anonymous Coward]

Can someone explain this sentence:

"Some reports suggest that VLC Media Player has been blocked in the country because the platform was China-backed hacking group Cicada was using it for cyber attacks."

Re:

[rsmith-mac]

Just taking a shot in the dark here, but I'm going to guess that the Cicada group was distributing a version of the installer with malware attached.

Re:

[NobleNobbler]

This article-- what am I missing? How can you block a media player from being downloaded in the same country that sells office space to professional thieves?

Re:

[andymadigan]

They're apparently worried the ill-gotten gains of their largest industry will get stolen by the Chinese.

Re:

[Sin2x]

VLC is on Microsoft Store, so I guess the correct title would be "India blocked VLC website" and that's it.

Platform? Work?

[andymadigan]

"In simple words, this means that no one in the country can access the platform for any work. This is seemingly the case for users who have the software installed on their device. It is said that VLC Media Player is blocked on all major ISPs including ACTFibernet, Jio, Vodafone-idea and others."

What platform? VLC's website is just there to host downloads, nobody uses it for their day-to-day work. And there's no reason VLC needs a server to function, it doesn't even need an internet connection. Whoever wrote this article has no idea what VLC is, nor could they be bothered to find out.

Re:Platform? Work?

[Pf0tzenpfritz]

Whoever wrote this article has no idea what VLC is, nor could they be bothered to find out.

...maybe they're from India?

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[tokul]

Modi will ban the weather next.

Re:

[K. S. Kyosuke]

It's Indian English. Lots of words in it probably don't mean what you think they mean, just like lots of words in British English (such as for example "scheme") don't mean what you might think they mean based on your American English exposure.

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[msk]

When did English in that part of the world lose the distinction between "a few" and "few"?

Re:

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I don't know if it did that, but neither do I have any idea what that has to do with the question about the words "platform" and "work" that I was responding to.

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[Duds]

Yeah but "One download site for ubiquitous software blocked some ISPs" isn't as fun a headline.

Re:should I be worried if I have it installed

[F.Ultra]

It's a DLL side load attack, it have zero to do with VLC itself other than Cicada happened to use VLC specifically since watching videos is a common thing people do on their computer, they could have used any other piece of software. What they do is they put a compromised DLL with the same name as one that VLC uses in the same directory where VLC is installed and Windows happily loads that compromised DLL into memory when VLC asks for it.

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[Rockoon]

but userland cant write to vlc's installation folder without the user giving permission

therefore the system must already have been compromised

Re:

[Rockoon]

The user gives permission when installing the software.

Then you are already compromised.

Thats what happens when you download malware and install it.

if its not malware, then there is no problematic dll put in the installation folder.

For there to be a problematic dll in the installation folder, you were already compromised, either by a fake vlc installer, or by another program that you gave privilege's to.

Re:

[F.Ultra]

yes but the whole idea is that the actual exe is not compromised so even if the user checks the exe it will match hashes etc with the real original (since it is the real original), most users have no idea that those strange .dll files can be dangerous.

Re:

[wisnoskij]

Who is going to hash an exe, and not notice that a strange dll file is in main vlc directory?

Anti virus should have no problem at all noticing that some system ddl with sus code is in a program's main folder.

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[F.Ultra]

You would be surprised. Also it's much easier to create an evil DLL than patch the evil into VLC, that way you can reuse the DLL unchanged for other softwares and not be stuck with your evil version of VLC

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[wisnoskij]

If you have admin access to the system, then why hope the user has VLC installed and infect that? Is Windows so advanced now that somehow even with admin access they cannot just infect the main system and need to go this extra route and infect common user apps?

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[F.Ultra]

they probably install vanilla vlc while they are at it. I think the main reason to do it this way is so that they only have to write a single dll, which they then can sideload with every other used application (they just used VLC since that was popular) otherwise they would have had to write a evil fork of VLC and not only would that be much more work, it would also mean that moving to a different application would require a new fork with more work to be done. They simply have a DLL that can take over you m

vlc is in some linux distos so will they get banne

[Joe_Dragon]

vlc is in some linux distos so will they get banned?

Re:

[Catvid-22]

The article, not just the summary, is a mess, missing some important details. It says that the software itself has stopped working. This shouldn't be the case if a user has the desktop version of the program. I can only hazard that maybe some mobile versions (e.g. smart phone or features phones) require some sort of ping back from the VLC web site to work. Another possibility is that it's VLC's ability to play online content that has been restricted, but a user can continue to use the app for local playback

Re:

[drinkypoo]

Another possibility is that it's VLC's ability to play online content that has been restricted, but a user can continue to use the app for local playback (e.g. of files already in the device).

That wouldn't make sense either. VLC only phones home to check for new versions.

Re:

[Catvid-22]

So only the web site is banned then.

Ironic given the facts

[pimpsoftcom]

It's ironic, given that India is mostly known for stealing technology from other countries, rebranding it as "from india by Raj", and trying to pass that off, that they would ban an open source software project that is freely given to everyone for free.

Anyone can get anything banned in India.

[shm]

Just write a petition to any state high court and they ban first, release the ban later. If memory serves me right, this has happened once before when some fool of a film studio claimed that VLC was being used to play pirated downloads.

Not sure what the latest trigger is.

Having said that DoH is your friend.

Re:

[MeNeXT]

DoH is not your friend. Pi-Hole is your friend with SDNS.

Re:

[bubblyceiling]

Combine that with Unbound, and you can have your own recursive DNS resolver, that works faster than any external service

Oh no...

[An Ominous Cow Erred]

They blocked the website of a piece of freely redistributable open source software. Where will anyone download it now?

Stopped at the border

[Provocateur]

The person detained did not bring a laptop; just a thumb drive