Can .mp3 files contain anything malicious?

Yes. I’ve spent a lot of time at work deleting mp3 files from our servers that contained downloaded music from Limewire that were infected with viruses and malware.

I’ve heard that Limewire contains viruses but I’ve never come across one. And I get all my music from there.

100k songs off Pirate Bay and I’m still clean.

Yeah dont ever use limewire. Either download it from youtube or Torrent it. I screwed my computers twice using limewire. And frostwire isn’t all that much better.

I don’t think actual MP3s can contain viruses, its just that viruses can pose as MP3s and then people download them.

I agree with @jackm, I’ve never heard of an mp3 containing a virus. A virus is more likely to act like an mp3, or be part of an archived (zip, rar) album of mp3’s (never open archives that are installers, the .exe kind).

Other than Nickelback, I don’t think so…

Mp3s can’t contain a virus. Some may seem to have a virus, but really are masquerading as a .exe file. This is especially easy to do when, by default, Windows doesn’t show the file extension if it is recognized. So the file could be named Song.mp3 and really be an executable file, because Windows recognizes it it doesn’t display the true extension which would be Song.mp3.exe.

That is always one of the first things I change on an install of Windows. To do so open up My Computer, click Tools, Folder Options… Go to the View tab and uncheck Hide extensions for known file types and click OK.

I hope that makes some sense.