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Harmful code in demos?

category: general [glöplog]
When you download prods you pull down software from all kinds of shady places on the net. Usually you just have to trust the people behind the productions that they give you what they say they do. Have there ever been any case of malicious/harmful code in any demo and how did "the scene" handle that?
added on the 2006-01-03 23:19:03 by El Topo El Topo
*looks at Shane*
added on the 2006-01-03 23:22:03 by Gargaj Gargaj
Chop by Trepaan modified win.com so that windows wouldn't start anymore.

It was even recognized by some antivirus tools as a trojan if I remember correctly...
added on the 2006-01-03 23:24:44 by sparcus sparcus
I've never heard of a case of intentionally malicious package. Anyway "the scene" would handle that with a load of fucktros :) and physical punishment for the authors if they dare to show up at party.
added on the 2006-01-03 23:27:44 by p01 p01
To find out how the scene "handled" it check google groups
added on the 2006-01-03 23:29:23 by sparcus sparcus
oops, my bad, I forgot the Trepaan case :p
added on the 2006-01-03 23:29:43 by p01 p01
BTW, I just remembered another one, although it's not really mallicious but quite annoying anyhow :-)
added on the 2006-01-03 23:37:30 by sparcus sparcus
IIRC rape by mfx has a bug which causes the filesystem to corrupt if the machine isn't rebooted immediately after the demo ends, that's not intentional though.

also in some cases demos have been unintentionally spread with viruses

and oh yeah, watching any taat production will surely cause same damage to you.
added on the 2006-01-04 03:19:22 by nosfe nosfe
...I've had a report of malicious code on some 4kb demos. Damn free anti-virus. I know there isn't any, if there is kudos for them: Graphics, Sound, and Virus in 4kb ;)
added on the 2006-01-04 03:22:45 by xernobyl xernobyl
I remember hearing about a ridiculously überlame anti-emulator virus in some Amiga demo a few years ago, which would wipe out the virtual hard disk if it determined the demo was being executed in UAE. This might've been just a rumour though, I haven't seen it myself.
added on the 2006-01-04 08:38:29 by break break
sparcus: don't forget Vierkabee who 'trepanized' your windows too! actually what it did was renaming your win.com to j4ce32.dll and gen a new win.com that would say 'windows has ben trepanated'.

good times!
added on the 2006-01-04 09:03:41 by okkie okkie
And Billy G Forze 2 probably did the same thing
added on the 2006-01-04 09:05:00 by okkie okkie
oh, and flush could be easily quit by pressing alt-f4 actually :)
added on the 2006-01-04 09:05:41 by okkie okkie
i miss csipd.
added on the 2006-01-04 10:22:36 by skrebbel skrebbel
Shane released two trojans under the guise of scene productions. One actually displayed graphics while deleting DH0:, the other was just pure malicious code.
added on the 2006-01-04 11:39:12 by xeron xeron
Sink by Pulse fucked up my hard drive back in the day.
added on the 2006-01-04 12:26:47 by Preacher Preacher
(it's just buggy, not intentionally malicious.. )
added on the 2006-01-04 12:31:29 by Preacher Preacher
is hypnoglow considered harmful?
added on the 2006-01-04 13:01:08 by kusma kusma
One of my demos actually deletes your "S:" dir if you exit it before the 3rd part has finished.
If you want to know which one it is, here's a hint:
It has more than 5 parts and was released more than 2 years ago.
I remember there was more than one Treepan demos that were treepanizing win.com. I even try to run them under DosBox and they still treepanized win.com, but in C: where I have an obsolette Win98 installation I am not using anymore..
added on the 2006-01-04 14:10:57 by Optimus Optimus
Optimus: Well, I guess it would be safe to run those intros under DosBox as long as you don't mount your C: drive to DosBox's C drive.

As far as I know the Trepaan intros only check for the existance of C:\Windows\win.com. Back in the days I had my Windows installed in C:\Windoze, which was actually quite lame but it did save me from trepanation ;-)
added on the 2006-01-04 15:11:21 by sparcus sparcus
or just run 'chop /LENZ' :)
added on the 2006-01-04 15:27:29 by okkie okkie
Trepaan is the reason why i dont run dutch demos and intros....but i guess the colorscheme is also a good reason not to run them :)
added on the 2006-01-04 16:54:40 by Zplex Zplex
\o/ success \o/

I would never try one Zplex, I heard they put brainwashing effects in those weird things!
added on the 2006-01-04 17:23:06 by okkie okkie
Ok, so there seem to have been a few even though they seem to be a couple of years old.

I guess one has to distinguish between code that's intentionally harmful and code that fucks your stuff up by mistake.
added on the 2006-01-04 17:35:11 by El Topo El Topo

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