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“Fractureiser” malware in popular Minecraft mods and modpacks

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Re: “Fractureiser” malware in popular Minecraft mods and modpacks

#51

Post by kaba0 »

mr_00ff00 wrote: post #12
afarviral wrote: post #3

This is highly annoying/intentional timing as Minecraft 1.20 just got released but now it is tainted with fears of viruses and extra steps to mitigate. For a friend who streams minecraft content and relies on the income this is a big setback and extra-risky for them if their account secrets are stolen.

Maybe this is a dumb suggest, but what about using a VM or second computer? I’m not a malware expert by any means, but I am pretty sure VMs are extremely hard for malware to escape when it isn’t expecting it. And VMs take almost no technical skill to set up nowadays.

It really should not be too hard to put the whole thing into a sandbox where only select files can be accessed. But desktop OSs are way behind here.

Re: “Fractureiser” malware in popular Minecraft mods and modpacks

#52

Post by LoveMortuus »

serf wrote: post #48
twelvedogs wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

my issue with them is i don't need my house lit up like a christmas tree at 2am in the morning when everything is "off", i've never found having a flashing light a great way of troubleshooting when there's a lot better tools to measure disk or network usage anyway.

disk activity lights can be pretty keen when you're trying to figure out whether or not the system is entirely halted or just slogging through a heavy workload. the kind of time when a tool that is good at measuring such things won't ever even attempt to load.

I also enjoyed the sound that the HDD made when something was happening. So even if the computer froze, the sound gave me a bit of hope. If there was no sound from the HDD and the computer froze, I just restarted the computer, abandon all hope.

Re: “Fractureiser” malware in popular Minecraft mods and modpacks

#54

Post by [deleted] »

pdntspa wrote: post #43
andersa wrote: post #14

It seems baffling that we have this massive community making mods with highly insecure raw java code, and somehow nobody thought of figuring out how to sandbox the stuff.

What's amazing to me is you have an entire modscene of young or amateur programmers uploading binary code to god-knows-where and this is the first time this sort of thing has happened (that I can recall) What's the security like on Steam workshop? Or Nexusmods? Gaming and modding is still rife with lots of little "here download my exe from this forum post and give it a run please". Pretty much every game I play modde…

[deleted]

Re: “Fractureiser” malware in popular Minecraft mods and modpacks

#55

Post by thanatos519 »

userbinator wrote: post #10

client.jar searches the entire filesystem When HDDs used to be the norm, that would raise an obvious audiovisual signal that something isn't right. Unfortunately with almost everyone using SSDs these days, and the loss of activity indicators[1] on a lot of machines, it would be barely noticeable. [1] I suspect that it's also in the interests of "officially sanctioned" malware to hide its presence.

I have cpu, network, memory, and i/o graphs in my desktop panel for this reason.

MATE desktop but I bet there are equivalents everywhere.

Re: “Fractureiser” malware in popular Minecraft mods and modpacks

#56

Post by jraph »

twelvedogs wrote: post #42
basilgohar wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the (several) modern trends of computing that I dislike severely. There are lights for all kinds of nonsense but actually useful information, like Wifi status, disk activity, and even POWER ON/OFF are removed for some misdirected sense of minimalism or style.

my issue with them is i don't need my house lit up like a christmas tree at 2am in the morning when everything is "off", i've never found having a flashing light a great way of troubleshooting when there's a lot better tools to measure disk or network usage anyway.

Yes. Related, I really do not need my headset to blink in the eyes of the person I sleep next to this hard. Why does it blinks seven times every time I use any command like volume up and down?

So thick black tape it is. (Can't do anything about this voice screaming the headset's status though.)

LEDs that are too bright on my laptops get similar treatment. I try to leave them a bit visible, enough to see in a dark room whether they are on, but the laptop not sending light including when it's suspended is more important.

Re: “Fractureiser” malware in popular Minecraft mods and modpacks

#58

Post by jraph »

LoveMortuus wrote: post #52
serf wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

disk activity lights can be pretty keen when you're trying to figure out whether or not the system is entirely halted or just slogging through a heavy workload. the kind of time when a tool that is good at measuring such things won't ever even attempt to load.

I also enjoyed the sound that the HDD made when something was happening. So even if the computer froze, the sound gave me a bit of hope. If there was no sound from the HDD and the computer froze, I just restarted the computer, abandon all hope.

I understand this; on the other hand I pretty much want a totally quiet computer, so I don't really miss the sound. A frantically blinking LED is useful, and desirable if not too bright.

Re: “Fractureiser” malware in popular Minecraft mods and modpacks

#59

Post by rightbyte »

dspillett wrote: post #20
userbinator wrote: post #10

client.jar searches the entire filesystem When HDDs used to be the norm, that would raise an obvious audiovisual signal that something isn't right. Unfortunately with almost everyone using SSDs these days, and the loss of activity indicators[1] on a lot of machines, it would be barely noticeable. [1] I suspect that it's also in the interests of "officially sanctioned" malware to hide its presence.

For a modern OS a some inductor LED for drive activity would just be constantly flashing at different rates. Something is always writing to a log somewhere, just on the OS itself. To actually be useful more information would need to be carried: different rates (by colour, brightness, or a simple bar of variable length), an indicator per drive if multiple, ...

It is good to know of the HD is in use so I can disable the perpetrator. I don't want to wear out my HDs for some convinience of a developer.

It is also the reason I like mechanical relays in car. You can hear the startup sequence and listen if something is wrong.

Re: “Fractureiser” malware in popular Minecraft mods and modpacks

#60

Post by CGamesPlay »

pdntspa wrote: post #43
andersa wrote: post #14

It seems baffling that we have this massive community making mods with highly insecure raw java code, and somehow nobody thought of figuring out how to sandbox the stuff.

What's amazing to me is you have an entire modscene of young or amateur programmers uploading binary code to god-knows-where and this is the first time this sort of thing has happened (that I can recall) What's the security like on Steam workshop? Or Nexusmods? Gaming and modding is still rife with lots of little "here download my exe from this forum post and give it a run please". Pretty much every game I play modde…

I think this goes to show how effective the trust we place in the social network is. These things don't happen immediately for every new game because mod spread through word of mouth (or forums, or server-to-player-to-server), and each community's moderators are there to take down any malicious payload that does get discovered.
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