Why is the Project Earth creating Malware, "Win32.Localinfect.2?"

I found a CD Rom that I had loaded up previously on Windows 7 and wanted to play again on windows 10. Clean software, never exhibited a malware response, but now it's showing and my game won't play as my antivirus is nixing it.

Any suggestions beside a possible false positive?

On Mon, 1 Jan 2024 11:09:32 -0800 (PST), David Trevi
<david.trevi.music@gmail.com> wrote:

>Why is the Project Earth creating Malware, "Win32.Localinfect.2?"
>
>I found a CD Rom that I had loaded up previously on Windows 7 and wanted to play again on windows 10. Clean software, never exhibited a malware response, but now it's showing and my game won't play as my antivirus is nixing it.
>
>Any suggestions beside a possible false positive?

I'm not familiar with "Project Earth" but I think it's unlikely to be
a legitimate positive. While it is not impossible for pressed, retail
CD-ROMs to ship with viruses (especially games released by smaller
publishers), it was a fairly rare occurence.

False positives are more common. One way to minimize them is to check
against other antivirus tools, something that's much easier these days
than it was 'back in the day' thanks to tools like VirusTotal. Just
upload the 'infected' file (the one that triggered your antivirus
program) to https://www.virustotal.com/gui/home/upload and see what it
says. If you get multiple hits, distrust the game. On the other hand,
if it's only your AV that is nagging you, I'd consider the game safe.

The issue has to do both with changes to antivirus and programming
techniques used by game developers. Unlike in the past, when most
antivirus programs triggered off of 'signatures', modern AV uses
heuristics to look for patterns of behavior that are often used by
malware. Older games - and "Project Earth", from 2002, certainly
qualifies - often used various hacks and tricks to better their
performance. These hacks sometimes resembles the same behavior used by
modern malware, and that can confuse modern AV. This is especially
noticable in games released before Windows Vista (released 2006),
after which Microsoft really cracked down on 'illegal' programming
techniques to better Windows' security and stability.

Of course, if you're downloading the game illicitly, all bets are off.
Delete the files, trash the CD, and burn your PC. It's the only way to
be sure. ;-)