Can I get a virus from a .mscz file?

• Aug 31, 2020 - 00:29

I was looking at a post about overtone soundfonts, and someone added in a Musescore file to further explain what he was talking about. It was just a .mscz file. When I opened it, it wanted to reset the positions because it was originally from Musescore 2.3.2. I accepted, and played the file. However, ever since downloading that file, my computer and Musescore has been acting extremely slow and I couldn't drag and drop things very well. I don't think you can get a virus from a musescore file, can you?

Thanks!

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• Aug 31, 2020 - 06:58

I don't think so, I can't imagine how.
An mscz file is a ZIP archive, so in theory can contain anything, including a virus, but MuseScore only extracts the mscx file (which is just an xml like text file) from within that archive (and the thumbnail, a png, and another xml text file that describes the content), so if there were a virus added to that archive, it won't get unpacked and as such not executed or loaded into memory.

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