With Love from Steam...

uvmain said:
You mean, why does one section of the ocuk forum have the same members as another section of the same forum?

I know, it's crazy!
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No im more reffering to certian types of members, the ones that think you must work in It know all there is to kknow about technology and shoot you down for the most mind numbing junk. kind of people that put me off coming back to the forums. but then you get the ones that can actualy talk sence.

anyway back to the op, and to "better my knowlege" what is this that is coming up on his anti virus? why would it do it
 
DavieCramb01 said:
anyway back to the op, and to "better my knowlege" what is this that is coming up on his anti virus? why would it do it
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It's his antivirus software incorrectly thinking that a file is infected with a virus. AV software works, generally, in 2 ways.

Firstly, they have virus signature files which contain "patterns" that each virus displays, and when your AV software scans a file (either because you've initiated a scan of your machine or because you've accessed a file specifically) it has incorrectly calculated that the contents of the file match a pattern for one of the viruses in the signature file.

Secondly, AV software now also uses heuristics, i.e. behavioural detection. That is, a virus tends to do very similar things, e.g. write to certain registry keys, open up ports, etc... When you access a file, the AV may incorrectly interpret what it's doing as typical behaviour of a virus, and therefore trigger an alert. Heuristics is becoming more important because of the number of viruses in the wild - it's simply not feasible for AV companies to keep up to date, and the size of their definition files is growing at an exponential rate and is not really sustainable.

In cases where the file is incorrectly identified as being infected with a virus when it is in fact clean, this is known as a false positive. The flip side of the coin is where a virus goes undetected, and is known as a false negative.
 
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DavieCramb01 said:
No im more reffering to certian types of members, the ones that think you must work in It know all there is to kknow about technology and shoot you down for the most mind numbing junk. kind of people that put me off coming back to the forums. but then you get the ones that can actualy talk sence.

anyway back to the op, and to "better my knowlege" what is this that is coming up on his anti virus? why would it do it
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You've been shot down on this thread due to offering advice when you clearly don't know what you're talking about.

It has nothing to do with your profession or whatever - it's all to do with you talking garbage.

Easy step to avoid in future: Offer advice in your field of expertise, not in something you have little understanding of.
 
GarethDW said:
It's his antivirus software incorrectly thinking that a file is infected with a virus. AV software works, generally, in 2 ways.

Firstly, they have virus signature files which contain "patterns" that each virus displays, and when your AV software scans a file (either because you've initiated a scan of your machine or because you've accessed a file specifically) it has incorrectly calculated that the contents of the file match a pattern for one of the viruses in the signature file.

Secondly, AV software now also uses heuristics, i.e. behavioural detection. That is, a virus tends to do very similar things, e.g. write to certain registry keys, open up ports, etc... When you access a file, the AV may incorrectly interpret what it's doing as typical behaviour of a virus, and therefore trigger an alert. Heuristics is becoming more important because of the number of viruses in the wild - it's simply not feasible for AV companies to keep up to date, and the size of their definition files is growing at an exponential rate and is not really sustainable.

In cases where the file is incorrectly identified as being infected with a virus when it is in fact clean, this is known as a false positive. The flip side of the coin is where a virus goes undetected, and is known as a false negative.
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well that makes sense tome now.

My knowlege is very basic to say the least, i have never had any dealings with computers in the past or of games, i do appreciate i shouldnt give advise outside of my field, i just thought obviously as games are ROm they cant be effected. but obviously if you are online and play online there is a risk. am i right?
 
DavieCramb01 said:
well that makes sense tome now.

My knowlege is very basic to say the least, i have never had any dealings with computers in the past or of games, i do appreciate i shouldnt give advise outside of my field, i just thought obviously as games are ROm they cant be effected. but obviously if you are online and play online there is a risk. am i right?
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There is an element of risk in everything we do. If you have a little common sense and web sense you are quite safe.
 
DavieCramb01 said:
i just thought obviously as games are ROm they cant be effected. but obviously if you are online and play online there is a risk. am i right?
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You can still occasionally get a game CD with a virus on it, if the developer was infected when they sent the master disk for production then the whole run of retail CDs includes the virus. It's not common by any means, but has happened once or twice.
 
howiepoohs said:
If you have a little common sense and web sense you are quite safe.
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Im somewhat quite good at knowing what to do an not to, i have learned so quickly. im now at the stage i only download from the likes of itunes and then i scan the system.

I never understand people that go yeehaa on the likes of lime wire and bit torrent and then wonder why they have issues
 
Of course there is always the possibility that the computer has been infected by a worm and XREngine.exe was simply the first exe that it hit... :p

But yeah - false positive is the most likely candidate - but I have to say that is somewhat unlikely given the age of the games and the fact that it was only picked up by the latest version of NOD32. Especially as I get updates at least twice a day. I'll try downloading it again and see what happens.

More to the point, however, why was there any activity coming from XREngine.exe when I was not doing anything even remotely related to Stalker? Steam spyware? Stealth update? Really underlines one of my pet hates with the current crop of 'helper' utilities (steam/xfire/GFWindows etc):

  1. INo! I don't want you to load at startup
  2. I'm more than capable of updating you when it needs doing - leave my system alone until I invite you to abuse it!
  3. I don't care how 'anonymous' you claim it is - stop collecting and sending my details to your masters.
  4. In fact: STOP CLOGGING UP MY SYSTEM WHEN I'M NOT USING YOU!!

Punkbuster was my No.1 hated culprit for this - why on earth does it need to be running in the background when I'm not playing BF2?

Reeeeeeally annoys me - what's wrong with 'run when needed?'
 
DavieCramb01 said:
Im somewhat quite good at knowing what to do an not to, i have learned so quickly. im now at the stage i only download from the likes of itunes and then i scan the system.

I never understand people that go yeehaa on the likes of lime wire and bit torrent and then wonder why they have issues
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You can scan it as much as you like - you'll never get rid of the carp 'that fruit seller' installs on your system every time you dare to use one of their services ;)

I'd take a worm over Quicktime anyday :D
 
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