this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2024
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Most antivirus I tested, even the paid ones, are so annoying with popups and complaining about cracks that I just take the risk and go without em

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[–] [email protected] 60 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Have you considered getting NordVPN? A YouTuber told me it protects against 100% of hackers

[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 month ago

Hilarious that people can't tell this is sarcasm.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 month ago

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Wow that's so Narwhal Bacon, I heard about NordVPN while watching my daily Skibidi Raid Shadow Legends content while eating my World of Tanks themed Factor meal with extra soy while trying to ignore my dad beating my mom after his BetterHelp appointment

[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 month ago

You're not going to find an AV that doesn't flag modifications as virus/malware. That's kind of the definition of malicious behaviour by a program.

Hell, Windows itself will overwrite changes you make to certain exscutables/dll's, etc, with its own file protection system.

Test your cracks in a VM. Then use them as needed, or do the cracking in a VM.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 month ago (1 children)

How do you know they're false positives?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Windows defender claimed they're bad because they are cracks, and doesn't mention any reason it thinks that would be a virus/trojan or something I dont want

"HackTool:Win32/crack" from games downloaded on fitgirl repacks site (the correct one)

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Isn't that a matter of behavior? The crack is doing something expected from a crack and the system warns you because most wouldn't use it without being aware. If you really trust the file, add it as an exception.

Or do you want a software that can vet good cracks from bad cracks?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I think the point is that it's a bit silly to classify cracks as malware

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

Cracks modify executables...classic malware/virus behaviour. Almost the definition of malware.

Which is why windows uses a file protection system since at least XP

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

Enterprise antivirus products have had PUP (Potentially Unwanted Program) category forever. Seems its categorized as "HackTool" so not malware.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Not at all, a crack does something to an executable file that you use. Malware would do the exact same thing.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

But you generally want that crack to do something to an executable. Do antivirus etc. tools just heuristically flag everything that looks like it modifies an executable? Lots of legitimate dev tools do that too, so it seems like it'd give a lot of false positives, but I haven't used Windows in ages so 🤷

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Well, how is the system supposed to know that you want the crack to do something to that executable? The anti virus just sees something is happening and flags it. It does not see a difference.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

I definitely get what you mean, I just have no idea if antivirus tools flag anything that looks like it modifies executables. My edit to the comment you're replying to may not have propagated to your instance yet, so here's what I added:

Do antivirus etc. tools just heuristically flag everything that looks like it modifies an executable? Lots of legitimate dev tools do that too, so it seems like it'd give a lot of false positives, but I haven't used Windows in ages so 🤷

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

Windows defender only lets you whitelist by file, folder, or process. You could whitelist a specific folder, but if you want to whitelist by category you'll have to use a different antivirus product.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago

https://virustotal.com/

Most antivirus software is more sketchy than random cracks.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

i don't think that's possible mate for 2 reasons :

  • software companys pay antivirus software makers to flag and remove game cracks
  • cracks use obfuscation and workaround techniques that are similar to whats used in viruses so most flag them as mallisious
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

So what you are saying you want a shitty AV that would not recognize a potentially malicious executable? Any normal AV should flag crack as a potential threat due to what it does.

Stick with Defender and whitelist executables you trust. This is computing 101.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

If u are on Linux I recommend using firejail on the executable

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

Obviously he is not on linux

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

ClamAV is an open source antivirus

https://github.com/Cisco-Talos/clamav

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

malwarebytes will flag cracks like all the others but when I used to clean computers for a living, it rarely gave a false positive and found the most bullshit on Windows pcs. This was a few years back so I don't keep up with how it is these days.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Use the megathread, it has lists of trusted providers (goat symbol).

Of course, that's not good enough, so my "antivirus" is to use an entirely separate device for gaming/piracy and a lower power device for production and work. If my gaming device gets compromised, the attacker will just know how many hours I spend in vampire survivors :)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

the attacker will just know how many hours I spend in vampire survivors :)

You could prevent this by telling us now.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

I haven't used an Antivirus in years... That's one advantage of GNU OS's. I run cracks inside sandboxes which then run Wine and DXVK for compatibility.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

You're not going to find an antivirus that isn't intrusive because that is their entire duty. However, Kaspersky has a very high malware detection rate compared to other AV solutions

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I sometimes think about disabling defender I think theres a site that can do it. Downside is it'll probably break windows but yeah it annoys me it's always wasting my battery plus yeah it throws fits over things like cracks

Last time I was mad enough to think about this it wasn't even a crack it was Autohotkey it didn't like.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Think it's also important that it's not a resource hog. None are perfect but I recommend ESET.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

This is impossible, all antivirus will give false positive sometimes and they will be annoying since they need to be intrusive to "catch" some virus

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I use ESET and rate of false positives is very low for me (as long as you disable detect "potentially unwanted applications", it asks during installation).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

probably I will be punished for this comment but: Kaspersky
second best AV is Malwarebytes,
there is a subreddit for ranking them r/antivirus or something

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Just don't use one. Just don't download anything dodgy and you're golden.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

They just said they were downloading arbitrary binaries to execute

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

He's downloading cracks or cracked executables

The cracking groups aren't exactly signing their work with a verifiable public key

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Yeah but that should be okay as long as he's getting it from legitimate places (rarbg, official fitgirl site, cs.rin.ru, rutracker etc).

I've not had an AV for like 10+ years, had defender disabled with GPO as soon as I installed W10 and had no issues.

The best AV is your brain. Obviously if you download GTA_6 _(Brazil)_by_xP3tYa1337x.pdf.html with an embedded .hta directly from an IP address in Kamchatka and you have IE installed then yeah maybe you need to give things a manual scan pass with defender or malwarebytes (or just toss it in a VM) once in a while but otherwise you're golden.

Even most vulns today labeled 0day are either unexploitable or require the user to be a dumb motherfucker.

Trust me.