For folks who pirate games, how the hell are you confident malware isn’t being injected into the executable?
For one to pirate I would assume source code has to be available and recompiled without DRM, right? How can anyone be confident that nothing else is being added to fry or takeover folks systems?
99% of things on Steam can be pirated by switching one single dll with one that’s been around ages and known to be fine.
There are relatively few people who “crack” the games and the community around it is very verbal. Some people go deep on inspecting things, and if something gets found they’re added to a list of untrusted sources. From what I’ve seen it’s hard to get that trust back.
So yeah it’s definitely a risk, but not a super dangerous one. Especially if you use Linux and a VM
You’re gaming in a Linux VM?
Steam already runs games in a form of container (pressure vessel) in Linux, it’s quite secure.
Also, in this day an age, anybody that is conscious or security plays games in a dedicated machine…
Edit: for those downvoting me and saying that Steam games in Linux are not containenarized and more secure, go read https://gitlab.steamos.cloud/steamrt/steam-runtime-tools/-/tree/main/pressure-vessel which is the basis of Proton and sandboxed, since like 10 years…
Steam does not run games in a container at all… Are you talking about Proton?
It really just seems like you have no idea what you’re talking about.
Best of luck to you.
incredible how you are so dismissive, but actually is you that has no idea. Steam in Linux runs Proton, Proton runs pressure-vessel as I said in my first message, which uses its own container runtime, akin to other Linux container runtimes, using cgroups etc, which provides the security sandboxing…
Don’t download from a shady looking website, go to reputable sources. Fitgirl, Internet Archive, etc. Read the comments if the website has them, don’t have to read thoroughly, just a quick skim to see if other people reported things and whether they’re false positives. Don’t download things before they’ve released, or download things for other platforms but "for Windows"somehow. Make sure what you’re downloading takes up the kinda space you’d expect from that game, (don’t download GTA V but it’s a 40mb download).
Yeah, we basically rely on blind faith. Honestly I trust pirates to keep their stuff clean more than the developers and the publishers themselves who just so often inject the malware called DRM in the first place.
How are you confident the binary you install from the developer doesn’t contain a malicious payload?
The issue is not that pirated executables might contain malware, but that people don’t have a clue how to identify safe sources. As consumers we use corporate trust (reputable company). As pirates, we use social trust (scene, fitgirl, etc.) Neither method discovers malware.
I’ll trust a pirate giving me something for free over a company selling me something for free.
Pirates vet things with lists of clean sites/trackers/tools etc. As long as pirates stick to those, they generally don’t have to worry about malware. Such a list is not difficult to find.
Sure, it’s possible for someone to get caught out by one of these sites or users deciding to turn bad, but that’s only going to work for like a day. It’s like kicking a hornet’s nest in the pirating world.
Folks that hire games, how are you confident malware isn’t being injected in the streaming software?
This is the number one reason why I’m not doing that anymore.
Also (foilhat) number one reason why so many people are urging people to do it.
