Crackonosh; Cracked PC games infect over 200,000* systems with cryptocurrency miner malware

[GDRRiley]

2 hours ago, Spotty said:

Some of the games on the list have been given away for free in the past. I don't think it matters how much a game costs some people just think they're entitled to it for free. It is also worth noting that the top 3 countries reported to have downloaded this were Phillippines, India, and Brazil which are all poorer countries where $10 could be more than a days wage so the price of video games would be a much bigger motivator to pirate them, but that doesn't explain why Poland, USA, and UK which have much higher minimum wages were also in the list of most infected systems.

I know entitlement is it. 
just weird game to pick

Wonder if there’s a lot of VPNs that end up in Portland and the UK 

[TVwazhere]

On 6/26/2021 at 11:36 AM, Spotty said:

Summary

disabling...Windows services such as windows updates

Suddenly I have an urge to play GTAV again /s

[CerealExperimentsLain]

8 hours ago, Eviljuche said:

There is no official organization that defined iNES as an open standard.

I uhh... Don't think you understand what an 'open standard' is.  It's just a standard that's been publicly released openly and can be used openly.   Like, the MKV container is an 'open standard'.

[BigDamn]

This is why you have a separate machine (a "jail", if you will) for debugging executables and monitoring their activity, in addition to downloading from reputable sources. Large game publishers have adopted the $60 game standard for some time, but many have decided to only put in $10 worth of effort. Games are releasing half baked, broken, and largely unplayable (Cyberpunk I'm looking at you). With that in mind, can you blame people for pirating these games? The issue is when people pirate $5-20 games from Indie devs on Steam. Steam provides ample time to test a game with the ability to refund if you don't like it. Indie devs embrace that. EA, Ubisoft, etc. left Steam for their own platforms where refunding is near impossible. Support indie!

[Just Monika]

That's why I only pirate my games from reputable sources.

 

/s?

[AnonymousGuy]

Do people not look at their GPU utilization or wonder why their fans are screaming?

[cj09beira]

On 6/26/2021 at 9:29 PM, CerealExperimentsLain said:

As a youth I pirated relentlessly, free games and all.  As an adult I stopped for a few reasons:

1) I got a job and got money.
2) If you wait a couple years, every game on Steam goes on sale for $5 anyway.

3) Some games, even single player games, get a lot of updates or new content.  The Pinball Arcade was a prime example, getting new tables every few months.  I don't want to constantly have to re-pirate a game just to get an update/new content.

That said, if Steam ever shut down, you bet I'd be joining the effort to pirate the games I had paid for.

I do still 'pirate' games sometimes, but its usually for the purposes of retrocomputing and the games are not for sale today and disc copies are hard to find on eBay.  I'm not hurting anybody with those.

even if you have the cd good luck getting it to read correctly after 10 years

[Jet_ski]

Some people here don’t realize that many people in certain regions of the world cannot buy or play genuine games. Not even a question of affordability, their region won’t get them for political reasons. This includes the Middle East, parts of Asia, parts of Africa, and South America.

 

Also people sometimes buy what they believe to be the genuine DVD that turns out to be counterfeit.

[CerealExperimentsLain]

1 hour ago, cj09beira said:

even if you have the cd good luck getting it to read correctly after 10 years

Pressed CDs are very reliable.  You're confusing CDRs and DVDR, which use an organic data layer, with factory pressed CDROM and DVDROMs which have a very good shelf life if not abused.  It's very safe to buy classic software CDs and have them read fine.  I have quite a collection of them and not one has been bad.  I've even bought *lots* of 20 year old PC Gamer cover disc CDROMs and had every disc read right as I imaged each disc to ISO.

[Moonzy]

2 hours ago, AnonymousGuy said:

Do people not look at their GPU utilization or wonder why their fans are screaming?

If you look at task manager(which is what many non-techy people use), GPU usage is near 0 (or very low if there's a display plugged in) when it's mining ETH (using nbminer here)

Only in MSI afterburner it shows 100% usage

[cj09beira]

10 hours ago, CerealExperimentsLain said:

Pressed CDs are very reliable.  You're confusing CDRs and DVDR, which use an organic data layer, with factory pressed CDROM and DVDROMs which have a very good shelf life if not abused.  It's very safe to buy classic software CDs and have them read fine.  I have quite a collection of them and not one has been bad.  I've even bought *lots* of 20 year old PC Gamer cover disc CDROMs and had every disc read right as I imaged each disc to ISO.

thats the whole problem, they are too easily scratched, and depending on where you live they can start to flake of the mirror layer on top

[CerealExperimentsLain]

45 minutes ago, cj09beira said:

thats the whole problem, they are too easily scratched, and depending on where you live they can start to flake of the mirror layer on top

And yet people readily maintain nice collections of optical media.  Look at retro gamers who collect PS2 and PS1 games.  Systems discontinued 10+ years ago.  They don't buy those retro games and go 'Well this is over 10 years old, good luck having that even work'.  They just inspect to surface to make sure no previous owner at the age of seven scratched the hell out of it.

It is not that hard to take care of an optical disc.  They are not this ultra delicate material that goes stale like a slice of bread as you would imagine them to.

[WkdPaul]

On 6/26/2021 at 11:36 AM, Spotty said:

[...] It does not affect legitimate copies[...]

The new Norton AV ;

 

 

But yeah, that's not surprising. This is a great exemple as to why you should always be careful with what you download

[Spotty]

1 minute ago, wkdpaul said:

The new Norton AV ;

But yeah, that's not surprising. This is a great exemple as to why you should always be careful with what you download

You're right. Norton Antivirus is a good example of why you need to be careful of what you download.

[SolarNova]

No surprise there, many ill informed people think they can just go online and download the 1st 'free' cracked game they find on a search. Thus leading to stats like this.

 

However, much like with anything, there are communities and groups that have reputations and can be 'trusted', its very rare for games sourced from such groups to be infected with harmful programs.So long as u get the game from the crack source rather than a re-uploaded version.

 

And lets not BS on the subject, there are some legitimate uses for cracked games.

 

For example, MechWarrior 5.

I bought the game outright, because its MechWarrior ..duh

But the latest DLC, Heroes of the Inner Sphere, broke a bunch of the best mods, and significantly so, requiring major reworks. Some of the modders are not willing to spend the time remaking their larger mods.

So the only way to continue to play the mods is to run a cracked version of a specific patch version of the older game.

 

There ofc other reasons, for example if a game only runs if connected to the internet (always online DRM). Use with laptops when away from home is impossible unless u use a cracked version of the game.

 

And a big one. Demoing a game before purchase.

Now Steam does allow this to some degree, but its very limited time wise, in a lot of games you wont even get past the tutorial phase before ur out of refund time, in a lot of cases its just not enough time to get a feel for a game.

Obviously those who never experienced the old way of 'renting a game' from the likes of Blockbuster wont appreciate what a true 'test before you buy' experience is. This experience isnt available anymore and some publisher avoid Steam all together making it impossible to even try a limited trial period.

In such an environment, downloading a cracked version of the game is the obvious solution,and one im not ashamed to admit I have done many times, and many times its saved me money as the game has turned out terrible.

 

[MartinTheActor]

CDs and DVDs remind me of a time when Demos were a thing. This is where I feel like game makers need to return back to the old idea of offering Demos. They served an essential purpose and I'm fairly sure that they would cut down on a lot of piracy. Of course, the double edge is that some sales may be lost altogether.

For example, I've just finally dropped money on Flotsam, and frankly in it's early alpha state it's just not even worth the £15 I spent on it. By comparison, there's a new game called patron that has a demo available for free. Now, as it's so similar to a game I love, Banished, I'll be willing to drop money at the first opportunity for Patron. I know it's shaping up to be fantastic and the demo just left me wanting more and more. However, if there had been a demo for flotsam, I wouldn't have paid anything to buy the game. It's just so slim on any real content. There's no challenge and no point to it, beyond looking visually stunning with it's art style. 

This regret when I spent some of my hard earned money on a game that I've been enthused to play is a big issue and it does make me feel more resentful toward a game. It's why I would consider pirating first to test out a game before dropping any money. Hypothetically, I might say that pirating a good game would make me more likely to pay for it in the long run to own it 'properly'.

So for people like myself, developers offering demos once more would be a fantastic way of not only generating buzz, publicity (assuming streamers and LPs were allowed), but also sales. I feel like it'd cut down a lot of piracy for those who have limited funds and find it difficult to choose between purchases.

[Spotty]

2 minutes ago, MartinTheActor said:

By comparison, there's a new game called patron that has a demo available for free. Now, as it's so similar to a game I love, Banished, I'll be willing to drop money at the first opportunity for Patron. I know it's shaping up to be fantastic and the demo just left me wanting more and more.

Hadn't heard of Patron before, but the screenshots looks almost exactly like Banished. Downloading the demo now. Loved Banished.

 

7 minutes ago, SolarNova said:

Obviously those who never experienced the old way of 'renting a game' from the likes of Blockbuster wont appreciate what a true 'test before you buy' experience is.

I'm old enough to have rented games for the PS1/N64 era. Wasted a lot of money doing so as well. Demo discs included in PC and Playstation magazines were also a great way to try demos, though I don't think I ever went on to buy a game that I had a demo of. Those were back in the days where the game you bought was based on what your friends were playing, the blurb on the back cover and how good it looked, maybe a review in a magazine talking about it. One thing we didn't have back then was Twitch where you can watch hundreds of hours of people playing the game before deciding to buy it. If I'm unsure if I'll like a game I usually check it out on Twitch to see what the gameplay actually looks like and if it's something that would interest me, or I might even become interested in a game after seeing a twitch streamer I follow play it and think that it looks interesting.

[12345678]

On 6/26/2021 at 5:36 PM, Spotty said:

 

Quotes

^{https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57601631}

 

What's somewhat interesting is in how the malware operated; disabling anti virus software and crippling Windows services such as windows updates and defender, as well as waiting for several system reboots before activating with the latter presumably to disguise the source of the malware with many people unaware that the pirated game they installed days or weeks ago was responsible for the malware allowing the the cracked game to be more broadly distributed before suspicions are raised.

^{https://www.tomsguide.com/news/cracked-games-hacked-pcs}

uninteresting*

 

it's from decades that they do that

[Mark Kaine]

14 hours ago, cj09beira said:

even if you have the cd good luck getting it to read correctly after 10 years

i have 30yo cds that still work just fine… they are actually  build to last "forever", but marketing was bad ,showing how "scratch resistant" cds are when they really arent, storage is important here.

The real problem  is draconian drm employed during the early 2000s, I have like 30 pc games on cd(dvd) or so and maybe 5 of them actually work on win10 , even though the cds themselves are in pristine condition.

 

 

[CerealExperimentsLain]

7 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

i have 30yo cds that still work just fine… they are actually  build to last "forever", but marketing was bad ,showing how "scratch resistant" cds are when they really arent, storage is important here.

Teenager me def left too many discs just sitting ontop of the computer as I swapped out to other discs.  Adult me puts their retro game discs back in the damn box.

[Mark Kaine]

13 minutes ago, CerealExperimentsLain said:

Teenager me def left too many discs just sitting ontop of the computer as I swapped out to other discs.  Adult me puts their retro game discs back in the damn box.

i know! it always perplexed me how my friends would have cds lying around everywhere, on the floor, on the desk, etc without the case, they even used it as coaster for their drinks sometimes…!

i think i ask "why" once, and sure enough the answer was "cds are built to last forever and very scratch resistant!"   UwU …

 

That said, this Cd still works, and yes its just as scratched as it looks like! o.o

 

 

 

 

[CerealExperimentsLain]

1 minute ago, Mark Kaine said:

i know! it always perplexed me how my friends would have cds lying around everywhere, on the floor, on the desk, etc without the case, they even used it as coaster for their drinks sometimes…!

i think i ask "why" once, and sure enough the answer was "cds are built to last forever and very scratch resistant!"   UwU …

 

That said, this Cd still works, and yes its just as scratched as it looks like! o.o

 

 

 

 

The only place I've really had issues with scratches is CDDA discs.  I picked up this awesome 200 disc Sony CD player for like 40bux at a flea market and it's been fun to just grab super cheap thrift store/flea market music CDs of typical things you'd hear in my high school lunch room and load up this monster.  Between the 'care' some discs are taken, lack of error correction on CDDA, and just cd player drives not being the most robust, I have a few discs that will fall into 'skip loops' and start repeating the same 20 seconds over and over.  Well that's what $0.99 a disc will get you.  I'm sure some of these were just in piles under the CD player in a car or something once upon at time.

 

Software though, I've found to be generally in better shape and computer optical drives are far more tolerant.

[Quackers101]

dont get how some are that lucky with their CDs, maybe it has other stuff to do with.

I know the movie discs are one of the worst I have experience with, even when taken care of them.

Might be the air and dust?

[CerealExperimentsLain]

17 minutes ago, Quackers101 said:

dont get how some are that lucky with their CDs, maybe it has other stuff to do with.

I know the movie discs are one of the worst I have experience with, even when taken care of them.

Might be the air and dust?

Hot take: Maybe your experiences are the atypical ones.

Like, your view is at odds with the vast majority of the retro gaming scene as well as collectors of movies.

[MartinTheActor]

2 minutes ago, CerealExperimentsLain said:

Hot take: Maybe your experiences are the atypical ones.

Like, your view is at odds with the vast majority of the retro gaming scene as well as collectors of movies.

I think it really could be luck of the draw. I have a Star Trek: Bridge Commander disc that has been used SOOOOO often, but somewhere along the line it got a crack near the centre of it. I'm so paranoid that it'll totally break that I've burned a copy just so I can still play what is IMO the best Star Trek game ever made.

I think it's worth saying though, those of us that still use discs for games are probably also the most likely to be the ones who've looked after them well. Like, my collection of games are all in their cases, all in plastic storage crates unless being used. When you consider the condition that most games have to be to sell in the retro market...I don't know it's fair to say that Quackers' experience is the atypical. At the time I remember having to constantly do everything from wipe carefully, to skimming the discs in some circumstances.