search

dhewm / dhewm3

dhewm 3 main repository
https://dhewm3.org/
GNU General Public License v3.0
1.8k stars 346 forks source link

Norton Antivirus and Dhewm3 #314

Open TheRegularDX opened 4 years ago

TheRegularDX commented 4 years ago

each time i run dhewm, Symantec norton pops up saying "suspicious activity from dhewm3", what does it mean?, and why does this happen?

DanielGibson commented 4 years ago

It means that Symantec (like basically all anti virus software) is useless shitty snake oil.

Just delete it.

If you think you need anti virus software, use Windows Defender, it seems to be least shitty (and is free).

TheRegularDX commented 4 years ago

thanks?

DanielGibson commented 4 years ago

Yeah sorry, I don't think I can do anything about it? dhewm3 doesn't do anything special, it reads some files (the game data), writes some files (in Documents/My Games/dhewm3/, like the config or savegames) and maybe pings the Doom3 master server - I don't think there anything suspicious about any of that.

You'd have to ask Symantec why their software behaves that way and what "activity" of dhewm3 it specifically considers "suspicious".

Sorry if I'm bitter, but Antivirus-Software really tends to be useless shit. Like shortly after a new dhewm3 (or also Yamagi Quake II) release there's always at least one virus scanner that flags the executable as potential malware, just because it hasn't seen it before, and usually after a few days or so those warnings just go away. Sometimes some people get the warnings and other with the same antivirus-software don't. And on the other hand Antivirus software often has security holes by itself, which means they actually make your system less safe, see for example https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2016/06/how-to-compromise-enterprise-endpoint.html or https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2020-8961