THE CULT OF THE DEAD COW HAD STANDARDS THEY WOULD NEVER HOW DARE YOU.
this post was submitted on 12 May 2026
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me_irl
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This is why you use https://virustotal.com/ to check the EXEs and DLLs before you launch the game.
Is that legit?
If it was a real virus, it wouldn't have to open a cmd window to do its thing.
Doesn't make it not a malicious thing though
Could be, could also be that there was some additional malware independently from that shell window.
A lot of the time with pirated games, this pop up shell is some kind of batch script applying some kind of hack or crack that disables the game's copy protection and makes it playable. If you want to know for certain, you will have to carefuly analyze the files you downloaded and figure out what exactly they do in detail.
Personally, I would never run pirated software on the same computer I use for important files or logins.
That could just be a patch routine to apply a crack, right?
Yes. A virus wouldn't pop a cmd, it has way better methods to gain privilege.
Sounds like something a batch virus writer would say
Damn you got me :(
You just need to use trusted sources for your piracy and this will never happen. The rentry megathread is one of the best, but there's also fmhy. Both will tell you of the best sites to find your games.
What is the "rentry megathread" and where can I find it?
It's at rentry dot org slash megathread. Good all purpose list, it's maintained by the subreddit
rentry dot co, not dot org
I had to help a buddy pick up the pieces after he ran a pirated game which had, unbeknown to him, been bundled with an infostealer.
He saw a momentary CMD window too.
A couple of minutes after he ran the game, the infostealer had vacuumed up all his credentials saved in his web browser including the session token for Microsoft.
The actor behind it took control of his MS account and removed the account recovery settings he’d set (since with the session token, they didn’t even need to authenticate). Lost his email, cloud backups, Xbox everything, etc.
Microsoft weren’t much help but they did transfer his Xbox profile. Everything else, they wouldn’t help with.
Don’t run software you don’t trust, kids. At the very least run it in a sandbox or something and scan the files it unpacks with a security product or three.
I bet if he ran NetBSD he wouldnt have lost the information /joke
Funnily enough, given the payloads were .PS1 and .EXE, he probably wouldn’t have.
A windows (edit: Microsoft) session key would be a bit harder to extract though since he wouldnt use chromium
Hey! My assigned win 11 work PC does that all the time!
Mine does too. Apparently it needs to remap the shared network drive on every boot. No idea why.
It may be a shitty virus...
shitty virus
w11
Is this always a virus? I used to have it a lot on my old computer 😅😅😅
No, it's not necessarily malicious.