AVG Says Most Game Hacks Are Crawling With Malware

[Combustion Kevin]

I can see people putting up hacks riddled with malicious software as a revenge scheme to every bastard that pissed them off online, don't know if AVG is the right program to catch it with, though.
What do you say, Avast?

"It's shit!"

 

[vasiD]

Anti-Virus company claims basically every PC gamer (because who hasn't cracked something, even legit gamers occasionally have to crack their stuff to mod it) has a virus that only they can find and cure!!!

Seems legit.

 

[synobal]

Let's be fair from the article they are talking about hacks for online games. Like say Path of Exile, Diablo 3, starcraft 2, Simcity MMORPGs etc etc. I've little doubt that most of those hacks are 100% fake. No CD cracks, and stuff that removes DRM is a different animal entirely though and while their might be fakes out there, there are more real cracks than that.

 

[Something Amyss]

If AVG were running NORAD at the height of the Cold War, we'd all be irradiated skeletons.

Assuming they actually got results when they responded to the threat. I'm betting not.

Uhhh 330 million people are playing the top 5 titles? Top 5 titles in what category? Are they including hacks for Bejeweled and Minesweeper?

Don't laugh. I hear the Hot Coffee mod for Minesweeper is incedibly popular.

 

[idarkphoenixi]

It's highly probable that they're throwing out the "90%" value to scare people into thinking maybe that they have a virus, which could increase sales on AVG.
Didn't Ubisoft put out a similar thing about how 90% of PC gamers are pirates? I'd like to see something a little more solid to back up huge claims like those, other than mere conjecture.

Not that I pirate games (except a couple of extremely obscure and ancient titles I couldn't find for sale), a lot of people DO pirate. So if 90% of those guys got a virus, I think we'd have heard something about it by now.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

And how many of those are false-positives?

That is a very good question. I've got some mods for an old game that turn up as a false positive in Avira, but come clean under everything else I've thrown at it. Apparently the Heuristics engine sees the way they exploit a vulnerability in the game's code in order to change it, and they get flagged as a potential virus because, you know, that's what viruses (as in the real deal, not your garden variety malware) do. Considering that DRM cracks and trainers work on a similar principle, it wouldn't surprise me if AVG is just being too aggressive with the heuristics.

Captcha: Face the music.

Sounds like good advice for AVG.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

I wanted to ask who paid them to say such nonsense, but

AVG used metasearch services such as FilesTube and FileCrop to analyze scores of hacks and cracks to find this data

Well that's possible. Self-respecting grups only release the good stuff. Whatever you can download on those 'tubes', nobody knows. But I'd bet most of those aren't even hacks and cracks, but just some random crap that gets downloaded to the computer, usually automatically.

BTW yes, I download cracks for games I buy. Go on, mark me as the bad guy. I'll rather take my chances with a good cracking group and 1000 people who give feedback about it than some corporate spyware like SecuROM, StarForce, Origin or Steam.

Don't know about Filecrop, but Filestube is just a search engine for file locker sites (like Rapidshare and the now defunct Megaupload), which the major hacking groups do use.

 

[Mithcha]

Huh, I used to use hacks and such for games some time ago, I never got a virus from them. I did get a red alert notice when I tried to install Spybot Search & Destroy. ESET didn't like it and decided to obliterate the file. Found that a bit odd.

ESET didn't like AVG either. Also saw fit to obliterate it. I think ESET just likes killing things without discrimination.

 

[N3squ1ck]

Or we all just start not using Microsoft stuff and stop doing stupid shit and then live safe forever.
Back in my days I had quite a few viruses (even some months ago a keylogger thingy stole my battle.net account, even though I still don't know where I got that thing from)
All that got me to be very paranoid and I now use a virtual Linux machine to surf the web, along with noscript and ghostery), and exclusively use Linux on my uni-Laptop.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

Wait. They based themselves off of what you could find out of websites like FilesTube? Seriously?

If anything, this makes AVG out to be rather illiterate when it comes to the cracking scene. Nobody from any of the cracking groups releases anything on public filesharing portals; you have to try torrents or GameCopyWorld for legitimate cracks.

As for a huge propensity of these modified executables being riddled with malware, well, sure! Idiots and trolls usually pick one group's released EXE and modify it. There's even been cases of fake cracks being released by proponents of harsher copyright laws.

Then there's AVG doing the publishers a solid by scaring people away. That's not what I'd call the most honest approach ever.

 

[The Artificially Prolonged]

What is with these kinds of stock images for "hackers"? A business tie? A [s]paperweight[/s] Macbook? A skimask?

[h4]ALL FOUR FINGERS ON THE SPACEBAR WATCH OUT GUYS THIS ONE'S SRS.[/h4]

Most of the "hackers" I know to be underage script kiddies, with real hackers generally looking like your average dude.[/QUOTE]

Well of course he has to wear the ski mask. What if someone saw his face through the webcam? :P

On topic:

I too would like to know how many false positives make up this percentage. I run kaspersky and even that throws up the odd malware warning on certain mods and even just standard game launchers sometimes.

 

[Groenteman]

ESET didn't like AVG either. Also saw fit to obliterate it.

Harharhar somehow that doesnt make me like ESET any less. Not like having 2 AVs at the same time is ever a good idea anyway, suppose the strongest one suvived here.

 

[Charli]

Yeah if you get it from some seedy website with no filters on.

You think!?

If you know where to get them legitimately though and you keep your guards up at all times you'll be in no danger.

 

[BernardoOne]

Lol @filestube That wouldnt be just 90% of game hacks, it would be 90% of everything you get there! If you get cracks from trusted teams you will be fine.

 

[PoolCleaningRobot]

They searched file crop and files tube. I wouldn't be surprised if 90% of all files on those sites were malware. How can they even call some of these malware infested files "hacks" if all they contained was malicious code?

 

[dyre]

I don't know much about hacks, or about FilesTube/FilesCrop, but on any well-regulated site (ie. not FilesTube) for pirated games / cracks, you can be pretty sure that everything is trustworthy. Though, AVG will probably still detect it, just as a false-positive. I use AVG and in general I don't have any complaints about it, but they're just not very accurate when it comes to detecting malware on game cracks.

I'm surprised this is news though. Back when I pirated games, AVG used to call out everything as malware, while malwarebytes (accurately) decided it was safe.

 

[Scarim Coral]

They acting like this is a new thing which is also why I never used those in the first place. I like to keep my PC as healty as possible thank you. In saying those there are people who are willing to take the risk and soo regret it.

 

[Pebkio]

Obvious news is obvious. Although I think the 90% part is a bit skewed. It sounds like they've only been checking the online storage stuff... and probably just assuming that it's a "virus" when there's just information tied to other forms of pirating. Unfortunately for AVG's numbers, I'm betting that while "90%" of the stuff they found was virus'd up, about 80% of all pirates know what to avoid (hey, if they can roundly guess, so can I, and 80% makes sense).

In that case, only 20% of potential pirates would be accessing the 90% that is the bad stuff. So let's take that 330,000-person estimate and common-sense it up a notch: 66,000. Bam.

And that's still a skewed number because the potential pirating sources wasn't varied enough in the initial survey.

 

[McMullen]

I imagine close to 90% of websites on the Internet can infect an unprotected system with malware too, either by the ads they host or by actual intent. That doesn't mean we shouldn't use the Internet.