Is downloading internet pictures bad for the computer?

Question

Bad as meaning adware and viruses.

Answer 1

yes and no.

many many many many many pictures on the internet are fine.

BUT a very few can be altered in a way that will allow bad things to happen...

A good example of which is the art of the 'JPEG of Death', which is a hacker utility that takes any picture and appends onto it code that takes advantage of a exploit in windows picture viewer that allows for a great deal of bad things to happen to your computer (from which range upto setting a new administorative account onto your computer)

also, cookie grabbers are hidden in pictures regularly... what a cookie grabber is, is when you request to view a picture from the evil server of the hacker, the picture also asks to see your cookie. This allows for internet sessions to back hacked (for example for forums or email)

and lastly picture bombing is the act of gaining an IP address by sending a pictrue to the victom. When they view the picture the hacker is given his IP address.


dont be scared though, be it that these exploits are out there, the likleyhood you will run into them are not very likely at all. The risk though is out there.

Answer 2

Depends on wherw you download them from. After downloading make sure you run virus and spyware check.

Answer 3

if you dont read the file extension correctly.

picture files such as jpg, gif, tiff, bmp, png

Answer 4

depends on what sort of pictures.