Is my friend wrong or does this exist?

[therealbrettalt]

I know it's not really a bug, but this was the first area I could think of to ask this, so maybe someone might be able to help. Well, I have this friend who I had installed ZDoom or now GZDoom, on his system, so I could play it at his place on his PC if I ever got bored. Well, a friend of his did some sort of PC deep scan, and supposedly said that ZDoom, aka GZDoom, had to go because in this deep scan, GZDoom supposedly was a virus, and had to be deleted.

Well, the funny thing is that GZDoom was downloaded from this official site. So is my friend's mutual friend wrong, or is there something that the ZDoom people haven't said? I'd like to know this, so I can prove that mutual friend right or wrong.

If anyone, even a developer could speak up to this matter, then I'd like that. Thanks.

Brett

[Mikk-]

Yes, there is a grand conspiracy involving 8000+ forum users and god knows how many more people that have used the engine in the past decade or so. Join us in the Botnet /s

It's either likely your mutual friend is suspicious of .exe files that he isn't familiar with or there was a flaw in the deep scan that reported a false positive. If there truly was an infected build uploaded onto the official ZDoom site then action would have surely been taken to correct such an immense security flaw, no? This situation seems like it could have been avoided if just a pinch of common sense and level-headedness was utilised, I mean, c'mon there's a thriving community centered around this very port, does that not tell you all you need to know? Or are we all just part of some zombified network of infected systems?

[Caligari87]

To the knowledge of the development team, neither GZDoom, QZDoom, or ZDoom has ever contained malicious "virus" code. Many antivirus softwares tend to trigger a false positive on GZDoom, probably because it's a small program often not on their whitelists, and heuristic scanning isn't always accurate.

Of course we're basically asking you to take us at our word, so I don't know if that proves anyone right or wrong. The question is whether or not you trust the GZDoom team. Personally I've been using ZDoom/GZDoom for nearly 15 years and have never had a problem.

[wildweasel]

There have been false positive readings on GZDoom files, once in a blue moon. Depending on how overzealous your friend's virus scanner is, anyway...

[Graf Zahl]

I stopped using "serious" virus scanners after getting too many bogus reports from nearly all of them and destroying some date in their overzealous attempts to keep my system clean.
Since all those false positives involved self-compiled code I came to the conclusiion that these scanners are not to be trusted, because realistically they can only work if they whitelist known proper files. And who knows how buggy that whitelisting code is. Windows Defender seems to be good enough, considering that my infection rate over the last 10 years has been precisely zero.

[Rachael]

I, too, use Windows Defender, and at this point probably wouldn't use anything else full time.

If an infection is suspect, I'll boot to a completely alternate Windows setup and run Malwarebytes from inside that.

If an extremely serious infection is suspect, I will run ComboFix, but that's usually more of a last resort. I've only ever had to run ComboFix on others' machines, never my own.

I take my system security very seriously and actively take steps to prevent the initial infection from happening in the first place. That means I keep my system and browser up to date. I don't visit fishy sites. Etc. Over the past 10 years, my infection rate has also been zero, but I will admit I've had a few before that.

[ramon.dexter]

I'm another user of windows defender. And I can say that I never got any kind of infection. I'm pretty cautious about what I actually download/sideload into my computer. But I have seen what antivirus programs can detect as malware. The last I can remember is the "hacked.exe", which is name of official System Shock editor. This file was detected by defender, and I had to manually mark it as a non-malware. So this malware detection system can easily mark non-dangerous files as dangerous. You can tell your friend he could be OK, gzDoom.exe is not a malware

[Cacodemon345]

I nowadays use Windows Defender. Way better and isn't as taxing as other anti-viruses.

[Enjay]

Honestly, unless it is a reputable and known anti-virus product, I'd be more suspicious of software offering a "deeps scan" than anything that came from this site. Those kinds of things just scream "hi, I'm going to pinch your data/infect your machine" to me.

If it is a reputable product your friend-of-a-friend used, then, as others have said, false positives are not uncommon. All of the big anti-virus programs will flag something completely innocent as a malicious every now and again. If you use one of those programs and get a positive that you aren't sure about, many anti-virus suppliers will have a facility for you to send the file in for a more thorough check and, when it gets shown to be clean, they will whitelist the file for the next update.

[ReX]

Personally I've been using ZDoom/GZDoom for nearly 15 years and have never had a problem.

I've been using (G)ZDooM for as long as they've been around, and I HAVE had problems. Mainly because I suck at playing DooM, and trying to protect my ass along an additional axis/dimension taxes my limited faculties beyond my ability to cope. Heh.

But, in all seriousness, over the years I have installed (G)ZDooM on 8 computers and they've never caused me problems. And they've never been flagged by virus protection software.

[R4L]

It's a false-positive.

I've downloaded GZDoom since like, 1.9, and I've never had an issue. Symantec Endpoint Protection, a business class AV we deployed at my job, does not even pick GZDoom up.

[therealbrettalt]

Okay, a friend of my friend did some complex deep scanning of some sort, and I don't know what this dude did to my friend's PC, but my friend, who I call my lil bro, told me that this friend did this complex system of deep scanning, and this guy didn't use any anti-virus or anti-malware stuff. The friend of my lil bro hasn't revealed how he does it, or anything like that, but he told my lil bro, who in return told me that the friend discovered that GZDoom was a virus. the friend of my lil bro hasn't revealed how he did it. So, what I initially told you all is what I know. That's why I asked the question, "Is my friend of my lil bro wrong or is the virus threat really there?"

My apologies if I couldn't clarify this.

[therealbrettalt]

Yeah, I told my lil bro what a lot of you are saying, but I think you guys want proof, is what you're saying.

[Rachael]

We don't need or want proof. If he wants proof he'll have to get it himself. Or a better option would be to just not use it.

If he's got this much of a hang-up over a false positive I sure as fuck don't want to help him through other issues. That's one less annoyance to deal with.

I'm sorry, but it's not my responsibility nor problem when someone puts way too much stock into what their antivirus says. You wanna use GZDoom? Use it! The license EXPLICITLY states no warranty, express or implied, is offered for its usage. So if things fuck up, you're on your own, and there is no contract.

We can certify our distributions as being virus free all day long if we want (and they are), but if he won't listen - NOT OUR PROBLEM! That being said, I don't want to deal with this, anymore. I'm not losing sleep over one person who can't figure out what a false positive is.

As far as dealing with anti-virus vendors themselves - we've tried that. They're morons who don't give a flying fuck about hobby projects and simply aren't worth our time.

Don't get me wrong - if GZDoom REALLY DID have a virus, you can be god damn sure I'd want to know about it so I could remove it right away and replace it with a clean distribution. But that is not the case, here, and all this is, is a bunch of fretting over meaningless bits and pixels.