You really should update your VLC Media Player now

Oh, hey, would you look at that — another article telling you to update something. However, in the case of the VLC Media Player installed on your computer, you really actually should. 

VideoLAN, the non-profit maker of the popular media player, issued a security bulletin announcing the update and clarified that this was not just about pushing out a fancy new digital skin or some feature-tweaking. Rather, the update addresses a host of security vulnerabilities that have the potential to cause some serious trouble. 

“If successful, a malicious third party could trigger either a crash of VLC or an arbitratry [sic] code execution with the privileges of the target user,” the bulletin explains. “While these issues in themselves are most likely to just crash the player, we can’t exclude that they could be combined to leak user informations or remotely execute code.”

Allowing a hacker to remotely execute code on your machine, in case you need reminding, is a bad thing. 

But don’t freak yet. In order for an attacker to exploit this unpatched vulnerability, VideoLAN writes that a person would need to “explicitly open a specially crafted file or stream.”

“The user should refrain from opening files from untrusted third parties or accessing untrusted remote sites (or disable the VLC browser plugins),” continues the security bulletin, “until the patch is applied.” 

Thankfully, updating to the latest version of VLC is incredibly easy. On a Mac, simply open the player, click “VLC” in the upper-left corner of your screen, the select “Check for Update.” It’s similarly simple on Windows machines, too. 

Download and install the update, and you’re back to watching (definitely not pirated) content in no time.