A game I downloaded after following the Megathread activated Windows Defender. Most searches in the reddit showed that it was a False Positive but I checked in Virus Total just in case and found this. The website was RePack-Games (I read the note but I didn’t find the game on the Goat sites), the game was Dynasty Warriors 8. I’d like to ask what my next course of action is here. The game also wouldn’t load after the cutscene when u select a character.
I do not know about this specific case, but many cracked copies are true false-positives. Only 28/74 flagged it as malicious. Sure, do your due diligence, but in general it’ll be picked by antiviruses as malware.
Try to contact someone with edit permissions on the megathread wiki and provide proof of the malware to get that site removed from the list if you have time.
Mostly phishing or link redirects. But the PDF in itself is harmless. Or Am I wrong here? Is it possible to install malware just by opening a PDF file?
My guess would be no… Because there isn’t any execution file to install sketchy binaries. This is very different from cracked games in the sense that getting malware from a PDF is more like a user mistake while a crack… You already know you are doing something sketchy and have no idea what it does in the background.
If someone has more details on how PDF can be exploited, except for the classical phishing attack (social engineering) I’m open to learn something new !
It is possible to run code directly inside PDF files, as can be seen with Doom or Linux running inside a PDF file https://github.com/ading2210/linuxpdf
In addition to that can PDF files prepared to trigger security weaknesses and exploits in PDF readers (often Acrobat Reader), to act as an attack vector and run malicious code.
Every file can have zero days targeting a specific application though. Sure, PDF is a bit worse than other formats in that regard but I’d say the likelihood of a zero day PDF is approximately the same as a zero day MP4 for your video player.
well yeah, but where do you find reliable information about that? i know there is the megathread but that doesnt have every site listed on the good ones nor the ones to avoid.
I run my pirated games in Linux sandboxed using firejail (Wine itself doesn’t sandbox anything as it’s only an adaptor layer) configured to block a lot of things including network access.
Then again I also run my non-pirated games in Linux in the same way.
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I do not know about this specific case, but many cracked copies are true false-positives. Only 28/74 flagged it as malicious. Sure, do your due diligence, but in general it’ll be picked by antiviruses as malware.
Try to contact someone with edit permissions on the megathread wiki and provide proof of the malware to get that site removed from the list if you have time.
I dont go on reddit much and when I tried to make a post it said I dont have enough Comment Karma.
You shouldn’t need to make a post, just private message a sub moderator.
Community score being 36 makes me think this might be a well-known crack. Check the community tab there, see what the comments say.
Yet another reason I try not to pirate pc games or software (when I can help it).
If you’re going to do such things, get them from someone you ‘trust’
movies, music and pdfs/ebooks should be “okay” to pirate though, since they are more read than executable programs, right …
Not really, even in pdf there could be exploits hidden and I bet the same goes for epub files
Mostly phishing or link redirects. But the PDF in itself is harmless. Or Am I wrong here? Is it possible to install malware just by opening a PDF file?
My guess would be no… Because there isn’t any execution file to install sketchy binaries. This is very different from cracked games in the sense that getting malware from a PDF is more like a user mistake while a crack… You already know you are doing something sketchy and have no idea what it does in the background.
If someone has more details on how PDF can be exploited, except for the classical phishing attack (social engineering) I’m open to learn something new !
It is possible to run code directly inside PDF files, as can be seen with Doom or Linux running inside a PDF file https://github.com/ading2210/linuxpdf
In addition to that can PDF files prepared to trigger security weaknesses and exploits in PDF readers (often Acrobat Reader), to act as an attack vector and run malicious code.
So no, PDF are not safe by design.
The spec is fairly complex. Someone ported Doom to PDF, for what it’s worth.
That doesn’t make PDF an inherently dangerous filetype, but I’d say it increases the likelihood of bugs/zero days within the PDF viewer.
Every file can have zero days targeting a specific application though. Sure, PDF is a bit worse than other formats in that regard but I’d say the likelihood of a zero day PDF is approximately the same as a zero day MP4 for your video player.
okay I will only torrent
.txtascii-encoded files then and open them in nano, this will make me totally secure.… And open all other files I download in a sandboxed-environment
i remember reading how some movies/shows came with a malicious lnk file that windows then picks up and gets infected
For the most part. Just dont download from sketchy sources
how do you know what source is sketchy?
Reputation.
well yeah, but where do you find reliable information about that? i know there is the megathread but that doesnt have every site listed on the good ones nor the ones to avoid.
deleted by creator
Just assume every public tracker is compromised.
I run my pirated games in Linux sandboxed using firejail (Wine itself doesn’t sandbox anything as it’s only an adaptor layer) configured to block a lot of things including network access.
Then again I also run my non-pirated games in Linux in the same way.