Lingon trainers..

[EMPiRE]

Our/My aim has always been to make available ALL existing trainers & tools even if they are badly coded, packed, promo's, call home, are in a foreign language or whatever. In the end this gives you the ultimate choice what to use (or not, that is up to YOU)

I would also want to see that the files are not detected as a virus/Trojan (read: Packed) or call home but this up to the author. I understand that some of them want to protect their work for various reasons but I also think that sharing your knowledge is a good thing and then there would be no need to pack files

My thought is that the AV companies should never have added detection for packed files, I totally understand that they did it as they want to warn EVERYBODY for the possibility of an infected file and not just a small group of people... (better safe than sorry)

Maybe we come over as “insensitive” about this subject but this is mainly because we get so many posts & emails about "possible" viruses/trojans that you become a bit immune for these kinds of messages as most are false positives!

Ofcoz it is possible to fake trainers and upload them. This happens, not often and most all are detected in time...

We will do our utmost to make sure it will be a save experience to use GCW & FF but in the end you alone are responsible for what you download & use from the internet, nothing new there…

[Joe Forster/STA]

Well, then it's official.

Originally Posted by EMPiRE

I understand that some of them want to protect their work for various reasons but I also think that sharing your knowledge is a good thing and then there would be no need to pack files

Being a faithful communist, I cannot possibly disagree with the second part of the sentence.

Much more generally, people are wasting way too much of their time, energy and other resources battling with each other when there are so many useful goals out there. (We could've colonized half the Solar System by now which would've inherently solved many of the major problems that mankind is currently struggling with.) Well, that's capitalism, people!

Originally Posted by EMPiRE

My thought is that the AV companies should never have added detection for packed files, I totally understand that they did it as they want to warn EVERYBODY for the possibility of an infected file and not just a small group of people... (better safe than sorry)

The problem with this is that, 1) when an executable is packed and/or encrypted, you cannot (easily) find out whether or not it's malicious because you can't see the actual code, 2) it's impossible for an anti-virus company - or anyone else, for that matter - to code depackers and decryptors for all packers/encryptors available, especially for serious encryptors where the point is exactly to avoid people from seeing what's inside. Therefore, the easiest way is warning the user about packers/encyptors that are usually found in malware and there's nothing we can do about it.

Of course, smart programmers listen to the needs and requests of their users. However, there's nothing we can do about this either.

[EMPiRE]

I understand that it is hard to check a packed file which they cannot decrypt but that is a bit too easy!

AV software should be more intelligent, if they encounter a packed file it should execute it inside its own sandbox and then check the results. It will be hard to make this foolproof but it is possible.

[Joe Forster/STA]

Some anti-malware software, actually, do this but those are rather called HIPS than anti-virus. E.g. the free Comodo Firewall has a built-in sandbox which, as far as I remember, has a semi-automatic community-driven online database of whichever file is or isn't malware and you can also submit (I guess, only the checksum of) your own "suspicious" files there. Such sandboxes to become common is, I think, still a bit into the future, especially for fully automated ones.