Hello,
I’ve seen it mentioned many times, and I guess it is generally agreed upon that probably the most “private” way of buying music is just visiting a physical store and purchasing music cds.
However, as the paranoid guy that I am, I’m feel like there could be security risks when it comes to putting in random music cds and mounting them for ripping on my Linux PCs. After all, who’s to say they weren’t tampered with or don’t contain any software?
I think I did read somewhere that the cds are usually read-only, but not sure if that really guarantees any safety. So, my question is, are my worries justified? And if they are, what can I do to minimize the risks while still being able to rip cds?
I’m no security guy, so take it easy on me. Thanks.
Everything is a security risk.
If someone would put executable software/malware on an audio CD it would probably be for Windows.
Audio CDs are WORM storage and look distinctively different (on the “audio” side) than CD-Rs/RWs so you should easily be able to tell them apart.
I don’t think you really have to lose sleep over this one but if you do test them first on a different computer.
Hello.
What do you mean by “test them”? I actually don’t have a different computer to do any testing, but perhaps there is a containerized way of doing so on Linux?
And, yes, I do believe I remember seeing that they are a different type of storage. Though, did not know one could identify that visually.
Test = look at them with the Linux disk manager or any specialized CD-writing software. It should tell you what kind of data structure is on a particular CD.
Ah, I see, so like checking if it doesn’t just have audio files or what one would normally expect? Thanks.