Virus Infection through online games?

[xiaogz]

Hi all, I played UT2004 before and loved it (not that good at it, but whatever...)

Since university ended, I wanted to get back to fragging, except for one problem..

When playing UT2004 (demo or purchased version), my Norton Internet Security would often warn me of an intrusion attempt from some IP address, and turn on auto-block; I would then have to restart the UT2004 program in order to keep playing (it froze), however, I would notice that the UT2004 server I had just played on can't be detected now, which makes me think that either the intrusion attempt was made by someone on that server, or that the Internet Security program believed legitimate online gaming resembled internet intrusions.

I then configured Norton to define UT2004.exe as a trusted program and played away, but once, after a 1v1 match in which I pissed off someone (he though I was aimbotting, but he just sucks), UT2004 suddenly quit on me, saying an error or something occurred. Also, the game couldn't launch afterwards and Windows Explorer crashed everytime I tried opening it.
I had to reinstall windows.

Now, the computer I used then was fairly old, with a Ram of 512mb (I think the hard disk had a big workout every gaming session), so it's possible that overexercion happened to the pc, or it could have been a virus.

I'm asking if anyone else had similar things happening to them, because I don't want a virus screwing up my new laptop (good specs for this game this time) but would like to multiplay again (single play=boring..)

Thanks for your time

 

[GreatEmerald]

Never had this happen. Theoretically it's possible to get infected that way but only from a server, not a client. So essentially if you don't visit untrusted servers, it will be fine. Though I don't really look at the servers that I visit and still never got anything similar.

 

[Delacroix]

The guy just hacked you and somehow sent a virus it seems....

 

[Wormbo]

NIS is dumb. It classifies any connection attempt from outside as an "attack".

 

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

What server was it? Who was an admin?
Actually it is possible in original Unreal, to create malicious mods which can corrupt players' files and it has been done in past. I wouldn't be surprised if someone figured out to do that in UT2004.

 

[xiaogz]

I usually only played on public servers (I can't really find good servers without a lot of mods, which takes too much time to find and download anyways...), and that one time when I defined UT2004.exe as a trusted program, I played on this weird server where the server name was related to guitars, there was only 2 players and my human opponent's nickname was Fender or something and there was a bot whose name related to guitars as well...
So yeah, public server, no admins, in DM-Rankin (I never played anywhere else)

Then you guys are saying it's very possible to infect through UT2004? What about if you only connect to trusted servers like the one on here? Can someone malicious send viruses anyways, just because you're connected online and not on a bad server or anything?

 

[GreatEmerald]

It's not very possible, it's theoretically possible, that means that it will almost never happen unless you're really unlucky. If you are in a trusted server, then everything should always be fine.
And people can hack you if you don't use firewalls, but since you do, there isn't that much of chance to do that. Using a router improves security immensely, though.

 

[xiaogz]

Thank all of you so much! Will frag online after posting this!

 

[gopostal]

I'm a little late to this thread but once upon a time I was able to help with the early development of clanmanager for ut2004. (by "help" I mean "watch" and give server space to allow Gugi to test)

Gugi was able to tunnel into a players install and see their root drive when testing. It was incredibly unstable and crashed the server, but it was possible. I remember him saying it could be very possible with more bandwidth.

 

[Adelheid]

There's your problem!

Hi all, I played UT2004 before and loved it (not that good at it, but whatever...)

Since university ended, I wanted to get back to fragging, except for one problem..

When playing UT2004 (demo or purchased version), my Norton Internet Security would often warn me of an intrusion attempt from some IP address, and turn on auto-block; I would then have to restart the UT2004 program in order to keep playing (it froze), however, I would notice that the UT2004 server I had just played on can't be detected now, which makes me think that either the intrusion attempt was made by someone on that server, or that the Internet Security program believed legitimate online gaming resembled internet intrusions.

I then configured Norton to define UT2004.exe as a trusted program and played away, but once, after a 1v1 match in which I pissed off someone (he though I was aimbotting, but he just sucks), UT2004 suddenly quit on me, saying an error or something occurred. Also, the game couldn't launch afterwards and Windows Explorer crashed everytime I tried opening it.
I had to reinstall windows.

Now, the computer I used then was fairly old, with a Ram of 512mb (I think the hard disk had a big workout every gaming session), so it's possible that overexercion happened to the pc, or it could have been a virus.

I'm asking if anyone else had similar things happening to them, because I don't want a virus screwing up my new laptop (good specs for this game this time) but would like to multiplay again (single play=boring..)

Thanks for your time

I had Norton break my PC once... soon afterwards I learned that this is a common problem for Norton users.

 

[SkaarjMaster]

just use the free or paid Avira AntiVir with a router and you should be fine.