should I scan multimedia files?

[CaptainHindsight]

I am concerned about multimedia files that I download having malware inside them.

In the first answer in this forum post, David H. Lipman soon states

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the answer is media files can be malicious.

But then he goes on to note

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If a media file is malicious it can and should be flagged by a traditional anti virus application.

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Malwarebytes specifically will not detect these trojans [inside media files]

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Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware (MBAM) does not scan media files, graphic files, data files or script files.  MBAM only scans Portable Executable (PE) type formatted files and is the reason I wrote "...should be flagged by a traditional anti virus application."

Assuming that the above info is still current, I have a couple questions.

First, why does MBAM skip scanning of non-executable files?  Yes, executables are the most significant danger.  But interpreted file types can still have malware.  Like MBAM eventually added support for scanning within archive files, will they eventually add support for scanning all file types?

Second, I note that I also use the paid for version of AVG, and when I scanned ~40 GB of media files just now, AVG took only a few seconds.  That was about as long as MBAM's scan of those same files.  This makes me think that AVG, which is supposed to be a  traditional anti virus application, is also not really scanning these files.  Should I be concerned?

[pondus]

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First, why does MBAM skip scanning of non-executable files?  

It is designed not to, it is not a antivirus

also see here > https://forums.malwarebytes.org/topic/185163-javaadwind/?do=findComment&comment=1048414

 

 

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 This makes me think that AVG, which is supposed to be a  traditional anti virus application, is also not really scanning these files. 

Dont know how AVG work but some AV have list of known clean files and skip scanning them?

you can upload and scan suspicious file(s) here  www.virustotal.com  /  www.metadefender.com  /  www.jotti.org

If scanned before, always click rescan so you get a fresh result as detection / false positive result may have changed

 

Edited July 11, 2016 by pondus