New Delhi: VLC, one the the most popular multi media player software and streaming media server has been banned in India. The popular media player software developed by VideoLAN project was banned in India nearly 2 months ago, however, if the software is already installed on any device, it should still be working, according to a report by MediaNama. As of now, neither the company nor the Indian government issued any official statement about the ban.
According to a report by India Today, it was a soft ban, as neither the company, nor the Indian government has officially announced the blocking of the media platform. Currently, only the VLC Media Player website and download link are banned in the country.
To put it simply, now no one in India can access the VLC media player for any work, which is seemingly the case for users who have the software already installed on their devices. As per the report, it is banned on all major internet service providers, including ACTFibernet, Jio, Vodafone-idea and others.
As per some reports, the VLC Media Player has been banned because it was being used by China-backed hacking group Cicada for cyber attacks. Few months ago, security experts discovered that Cicada was using VLC Media Player to deploy a malicious malware loader as part of a long-running cyber attack campaign.
The government has, to date, banned over 270 Chinese apps. Several such apps rechristened themselves in new avatars to enter India but were banned again. Recently, PUBG’s Indian version dubbed Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI) has also been banned in India and removed from the Google Play store and Apple App store. The reason behind blocking these apps is that the government feared these platforms were sending user data to China. However, VLC Media Player is not backed by a Chinese company. It is developed by VideoLAN, a Paris-based firm.
