VAC detected a virus on my PC that neither my AV nor Windows Defender detected
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https://ne.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/5tlycb/vac_detected_a_virus_on_my_pc_that_neither_my_av/
Even anti-cheat software is better at malware detection than Avast. Who would have thought!
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@Gąska said in VAC detected a virus on my PC that neither my AV nor Windows Defender detected:
. https://ne.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/5tlycb/vac_detected_a_virus_on_my_pc_that_neither_my_av/
Even anti-cheat software is better at malware detection than Avast. Who would have thought!VAC.... Valve Anti Cheat.... okay...... but it detected a virus? that's not what it does.... it detects suspicious behavior and manipulation of game files.... i mean it could catch a virus that modified the game files i guess, but still.... that's making my bullshit-o-meter ping....
THX VOLVO!
wha? Volvo? Is he talking about the car company?! What does Volvo have to do with this?.... My bullshit-o-meter just got more active.
i dunno. this one smells fishy to me.... I mean he could be telling the truth, but in a bullshit sort of way.... or he could be trying to get out of a ban trying to claim "a virus did it" I'm unconvinced in either case.
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@accalia said in VAC detected a virus on my PC that neither my AV nor Windows Defender detected:
wha? Volvo? Is he talking about the car company?! What does Volvo have to do with this?
It's a meme. People say Volvo instead of Valve.
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@LB_ said in VAC detected a virus on my PC that neither my AV nor Windows Defender detected:
@accalia said in VAC detected a virus on my PC that neither my AV nor Windows Defender detected:
wha? Volvo? Is he talking about the car company?! What does Volvo have to do with this?
It's a meme. People say Volvo instead of Valve.
oh.
i was unaware as i don't bother trying to keep up with memes.
that makes it less BS, btu still.... i have suspicions that things are exactly as he says....
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@accalia said in VAC detected a virus on my PC that neither my AV nor Windows Defender detected:
i have suspicions that things are exactly as he says....
Things rarely are...
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@accalia it might be that the virus has written itself into random executables and DLLs, and it just happened that CS was one of them, and it just happened that VAC saw that game files aren't alright. After personally fixing sound issues on my own PC by playing Deluxe Ski Jump, I'm willing to believe everything when it comes to computers.
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VAC might be better than Avast at anti-malware, but it is, in its current state, literally the worst CS:GO anti-cheat software, with some free, widely used, open source cheats avoiding detection for almost two years at a time. Everything about VAC and Valves incredibly abysmal management of the counter strike franchise is a god damn meme because otherwise the community could not cope with the sheer sadness of it all. The people on the CS:GO subreddit always claim they are the unwanted stepchild of Gaben, while DOTA2 is the favorite and only loved son.
For instance, there is no beta testing in CS:GO. None. All changes immediately go to "production", meaning the official matchmaking servers. As soon as a feature is finished coding it gets put into the next patch which then get rolled out to all players, and when something is buggy they just hotfix it. Between the developer finishing the code and the entire playerbase "testing" it wether they want to or not, no actual player or tester seems to touch the patch at all. Valve treats it like some major technology breakthrough that they now have a "beta branch" which does not mean anything like what the name implies, but is pretty much just a way for turnament organisers to actually install an older patch so they don't have to play on sometimes broken live versions.
Also, there is no community manager. There is noone responsible at Valve for communication with the community. They prefer to "communicate" through the patchnotes of patches that can be month appart at times. They allways blame it on the structure of Valve where everyone gets to choose what to work on, and apparently everyone wants to work on DOTA2 and nobody in particular feels the need to do community management in CS:GO and hiring someone for that goes against company policy.
The community allways ironically treates it like some coming of a prophet when a CS:GO dev even does so much as leave a single god damn comment, because it practically never happens and never gives anything but vague hints of "there is a least 1 person currently working on CS:GO" and zero usefull info.
I absolutely buy that VAC complained about a manipulated DLL, that is, as far as I know, one of the few things VAC gets right (after two years of several cheats simply injecting themselves into DLLs to become undetectable because VAC originally did not check them at all).
I am uncertain though wether the virus truly is the thing that cause the VAC errors, as VAC is very wacky and often simply does not work on someones computer for no apparent reason at all, even after a full clean reinstall of the entire system, just to suddenly work again.
It has actually happened that pro players were kicked live on stage during Valve organised matches, but not for actually detecting cheats but for "VAC connectivity errors". Which is allways a massive annoyance because then the admins have to restore the entire game server to its previous state per hand because getting kicked is counted as suicide and suiciding gives the enemy team money, and if it happens at end of round time, the kicked player will not get any of the win or loss money, both of which massively screw over the game economy of the match, which is a massively important game mechanic that the majority of strategies revolve around; there simply is no built in way of saving the current state and reverting and replaying it in the player economy, meaning the admins have to manually spawn lost weapons and manually add and substract money from the players.
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@Quwertzuiopp said in VAC detected a virus on my PC that neither my AV nor Windows Defender detected:
They allways blame it on the structure of Valve where everyone gets to choose what to work on, and apparently everyone wants to work on DOTA2 and nobody in particular feels the need to do community management in CS:GO and hiring someone for that goes against company policy.
Wait. Is that real? WHY THE FUCK DO NONE OF THEM WANT TO WORK ON THE FUCKING HALF LIFE FRANCHISE?
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@Weng They do. Its just that the one thing management actually seems to do is decide which projects are active and which are cancelled. Allegedly, HL3 was cancelled at least two times already, because Gabe thought it was not good enaugh. Its the reason he says they never announce anything ahead of time, because they don't want to be bound to the promise of releasing something then and then, only to disappoint the fans when they canncel or restart from scratch, which Gabe in a recent AMA said they do very often, a lot more than other companies.
Also he said "they" only want to start new multiplayer projects for now.
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@Gąska said in VAC detected a virus on my PC that neither my AV nor Windows Defender detected:
After personally fixing sound issues on my own PC by playing Deluxe Ski Jump, I'm willing to believe everything when it comes to computers.
Story time.
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@accalia Unless VAC has changed just recently, there's more BS here than you've mentioned:
- VAC bans are permanent.*
- VAC bans are delayed weeks or months to prevent cheaters from knowing which cheat got them VAC banned.
*There have been 2 exceptions that I know of, both because of a bug in VAC that mass banned a bunch of people.
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@powerlord Probably VAC connectivity error or VAC corrupt game state error. VAC won't let you play with changed gamefiles but only does scanning during the game so you can get kicked out of a live match because some files don't match their checksums, banning cheaters is not all it does.
A lot of people get VAC authentification errors all the time for no apparent reason, didn't KennyS famously have this and was unable to train on his own PC for a few days because of that?
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@heterodox said in VAC detected a virus on my PC that neither my AV nor Windows Defender detected:
@Gąska said in VAC detected a virus on my PC that neither my AV nor Windows Defender detected:
After personally fixing sound issues on my own PC by playing Deluxe Ski Jump, I'm willing to believe everything when it comes to computers.
Story time.
I believe I told it in another topic already. But whatever.
Back in XP times, I've had a PC. It was working fine for the longest time. But one day, the sound suddenly stopped working. All games were mute, all movies were mute, same with Youtube and everything else. I've clicked all the "test sound" buttons I could find in the system (volume control, sound mixer, sound properties in control panel, driver application, etc. etc.), and the only one that emitted any sound at all was DirectX Diagnostic Tool, but only with one of four devices (or subsystems, or drivers, or whatever this section was labelled - can't remember exactly after 10 years, and the version I have now doesn't have any functionality of the old tool). Also, out of about fifty games I've had, only one had sound working - Rally Championship 2000. Fuck knows what's so special about this game - other games from the same year were all mute.
Trying everything my 12 year old self could do, I didn't succeed at fixing the problem, and so I was forced to use computer without sound for about two weeks. I had many games, but got bored easily, so I switched between them frequently. Eventually, I played this old DOS game called Deluxe Ski Jump (I don't know how popular it is abroad, but in Poland, it had Mario level of popularity; literally everyone who plays video games played it at least once). It didn't have sound either, just like everything else. But then, after reboot, I noticed that the sound came back. Every game, every app, every test - everything was playing correctly. At the time I thought it was just random event, and there was no connection between the sound coming back and me doing anything.
But after a month or so, the problem came back. I'm not sure if it was conscious choice or just pure luck, but I played DSJ again - and that's when I noticed the pattern. The sound would break system-wide every so often, and when it happens, starting DSJ and then rebooting system fixed it. It worked 100% of time, and I literally didn't do anything else. This was when I lost all my sanity.
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@Gąska said in VAC detected a virus on my PC that neither my AV nor Windows Defender detected:
This was when I lost all my sanity.
It sounds to me like a cold-boot init glitch, and DSJ happened to init the card manually, and the card stayed initialized through a warm reboot.
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@Gąska said in VAC detected a virus on my PC that neither my AV nor Windows Defender detected:
Back in XP times, I've had a PC. It was working fine for the longest time. But one day, the sound suddenly stopped working.
TL;DR version: young @Gąska’s future was decided by a magic computer.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in VAC detected a virus on my PC that neither my AV nor Windows Defender detected:
@Gąska said in VAC detected a virus on my PC that neither my AV nor Windows Defender detected:
This was when I lost all my sanity.
It sounds to me like a cold-boot init glitch, and DSJ happened to init the card manually, and the card stayed initialized through a warm reboot.
It would make sense if DSJ itself had sound before reboot, and if reboot wasn't necessary. Also, RC2K had sound, but didn't fix it for other apps.
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@Gąska That's a cool vacuum cleaner. Mine just helps with dust and stuff
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@Quwertzuiopp said in VAC detected a virus on my PC that neither my AV nor Windows Defender detected:
They allways blame it on the structure of Valve where everyone gets to choose what to work on, and apparently everyone wants to work on DOTA2 and nobody in particular feels the need to do community management in CS:GO and hiring someone for that goes against company policy.
I've said before and I'll probably say again: this is the biggest issue with that policy. Everyone wants the fun sexy jobs like working on DOTA, nobody wants the necessary but difficult jobs like explaining to the fans why everyone's working on DOTA instead of testing CS patches. Or like testing CS patches.
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@Gąska said in VAC detected a virus on my PC that neither my AV nor Windows Defender detected:
Eventually, I played this old DOS game called Deluxe Ski Jump (I don't know how popular it is abroad, but in Poland, it had Mario level of popularity; literally everyone who plays video games played it at least once).
Ah, yes, the game that everyone played in school instead of working on their assignments and got scolded for it.
Including me, of course, even though I finished my coding in the first 5 minutes since the assignments were the most trivial pieces of code you could imagine... Stupid noob
cow-orkersclassmates...
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@fbmac said in VAC detected a virus on my PC that neither my AV nor Windows Defender detected:
@Gąska That's a cool vacuum cleaner. Mine just helps with dust and stuff
It's funny because Dust is the map with most cheaters.
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@Gurth said in VAC detected a virus on my PC that neither my AV nor Windows Defender detected:
a magic computer.
Is there such a thing as a non-magic computer? One that operates reliably and does not randomly do stuff on its own?
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@anonymous234 it would be too expensive
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@accalia said in VAC detected a virus on my PC that neither my AV nor Windows Defender detected:
VAC.... Valve Anti Cheat.... okay...... but it detected a virus? that's not what it does.... it detects suspicious behavior and manipulation of game files....
It detects cheating, which can be done in 458,723 different ways each involving a different layer of the OS. So basically it has to analyze the entire system for anything that might alter the gameplay in any way, including anything that might alter VAC itself.
I wouldn't be surprised if it outdid some commercial intrusion detection systems.
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@anonymous234 said in VAC detected a virus on my PC that neither my AV nor Windows Defender detected:
@Gurth said in VAC detected a virus on my PC that neither my AV nor Windows Defender detected:
a magic computer.
Is there such a thing as a non-magic computer? One that operates reliably and does not randomly do stuff on its own?
Anything that runs avionics would be my guess. After all, if a normal computer crashes, someone swears at the screen and hits the Reset button. But when avionics software crashes, hundreds of people die in a massive fireball (maybe).
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@anonymous234 said in VAC detected a virus on my PC that neither my AV nor Windows Defender detected:
Is there such a thing as a non-magic computer?
I heard that recent Intel Core processors replaced magic smoke with 3D models.
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@RaceProUK said in VAC detected a virus on my PC that neither my AV nor Windows Defender detected:
Anything that runs avionics would be my guess
Yes, but then you have to pay a team of engineers >$100,000 to certify any software you want to run in it.
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@Yamikuronue said in VAC detected a virus on my PC that neither my AV nor Windows Defender detected:
@Quwertzuiopp said in VAC detected a virus on my PC that neither my AV nor Windows Defender detected:
They allways blame it on the structure of Valve where everyone gets to choose what to work on, and apparently everyone wants to work on DOTA2 and nobody in particular feels the need to do community management in CS:GO and hiring someone for that goes against company policy.
I've said before and I'll probably say again: this is the biggest issue with that policy. Everyone wants the fun sexy jobs like working on DOTA, nobody wants the necessary but difficult jobs like explaining to the fans why everyone's working on DOTA instead of testing CS patches. Or like testing CS patches.
That is the first thing any sane person thinks when they are first confronted by the fact that valve operates like this, right after naive disbelieve, but it apparently does not stop them.
There are days I honestly hope they would either sell Counter Strike or let it die to let a better programmed game take it's place, but given how absolutely horrible they can be to the game and still without much doing of their own make it the biggest e-sport title there is while desperately trying to make DOTA2 more popular, I am afraid they will just let the self-propelling egg laying golden wool milk pig that is CS print cash for them with zero effort.
The problem is just that CS:GO is now so popular that no game could seriously hope to catch up to it without years of trying to catch up in which CS will steal all their momentum, so it is almost impossible to make a better CS and get the ball rolling to free the community of Valve.
I allways hear how great of a game company Valve is but as an avid lover of the game the history of CS has shown me how terrible they honestly are.
Their current ideas for "developing" CS:GO seem to be "how can we make even more money out of the in game item economy of CS". Their latest ideas: Reintroducing features that used to be in the previous games, but having you pay to use them, like making sprays have a limited 50 uses and make them a paid item; and of course taking cool community ideas, but instead turn them into a monetized bastardization noone asked about ("hey valve, wouldn't it be cool to let the server hosts change the glove skins so that in pro matches each team can wear gloves with their logo on it like that one cool modded leage did?" -> "great idea, but instead of team gloves you can now buy random ass ugly glove skins that cost 250$! Thank us later and pls trade them as much as you can, we get 10% of the price k thx bye")
It is almost funny because of how much everyone seems to love working on DOTA but while they accidentially created a thriving and working economy in CS:GO - even though they didn't really intendet to-, they completely ruined their beloved DOTA's economy.
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@Quwertzuiopp It honestly sounds like Valve is trying to do Programmer Anarchy. Which I'm tempted to rant about elsewhere, it deserves a whole thread.
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@Yamikuronue Indeed it does, do give in to the temptation.
