Cybercriminals and hackers often use popular file sharing sites to distribute their malicious files. A lot of these file sharing websites do not perform an AV scan on the files which are uploaded, putting unaware users at risk which are “socially engineered” by the cybercriminal / hacker.
We have decided to create this list in an random order, meaning that we did not take a look at the DMOZ, PageRank and visitors statistics of the provided file sharing websites.
File sharing sites:
+ = No AV scan
++ = AV scan
- DropBox ++
- MediaFire +
- 4Shared +
- Google Drive ++
- SkyDrive / OneDrive ++
- iCloud ++
- Box ++
- Mega +
- ZippyShare +
- Uploaded +
- DepositFiles +
- HighTail ++
- SendSpace +
- Filedropper +
- Wikisend +
- Tinyupload +
- Fileconvoy +
- Transfer.pcloud ++
- Filemail +
- HyperFileShare +
- TransferBigFiles +
Dropbox.com and Malware
Dropbox has made a clear statement regarding how they deal with viruses and malware. The File sharing company has stated that they will sync any files which are added to the Dropbox service, meaning that they will not clean any files which might be infected with malware. They also state that it is wise for the end users (you) to use good security practices like running an anti-virus software on the device. On the 29th of April, 2015 it was reported that the ‘Bartalex macro malware‘ was hosted on the Dropbox file sharing environment.
File sharing
File sharing environments which are owned by big corporations like Google, Microsoft and Apple often perform AV scans on the files which are uploaded to their environments. The chance that iCloud will be used to host malware is at this moment very slim, but in the future the chance that malware is hosted on iCloud will rise as there will be more attacks on the Apple products.