I understand that sharing video, photos, documents etc. is relatively safe because the data is not executed in the processor as instructions. How come people are willing to download and install pirated software though? How can one be confident that it does not contain malicious addons? Are people just don’t know the risks? Or are there protection mechanisms that I am missing? I mean since the software is usually cracked there is not much use in comparing checksums with the originals, is it?
I think it is very rare to find or even craft a video file that is able to allow for arbitrary code execution on an updated video player software like VLC. The same is true for photos or documents with the exception of office documents using macros.
“Updated” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Lots of people don’t keep their software up to date.
But yeah, the likelihood of any of us randomly happening upon 0days in the wild is pretty low.