this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2024
21 points (76.9% liked)
Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
54411 readers
185 users here now
⚓ Dedicated to the discussion of digital piracy, including ethical problems and legal advancements.
Rules • Full Version
1. Posts must be related to the discussion of digital piracy
2. Don't request invites, trade, sell, or self-promote
3. Don't request or link to specific pirated titles, including DMs
4. Don't submit low-quality posts, be entitled, or harass others
Loot, Pillage, & Plunder
📜 c/Piracy Wiki (Community Edition):
💰 Please help cover server costs.
Ko-fi | Liberapay |
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Pack what executables exactly?
Like take a copy of Nodobe Notoshop and repack it?
If that's what you mean, uh, politely, but fuck no. Malware is enough of a problem that there's no way I'd want to start downloading crap that's been UPXed since that's going to make it impossible to determine if it's legitimate or not by (most) endpoint tools, or they'll just see UPX and go 'bad shit!' on everything.
What do you actually mean?
Do you scan for torrents using some endpoint tools ?
Sorry, I meant antivirus. (Corpo IT calls it endpoint, since it's, well, the endpoint.)
You had clearly misunderstood what this tool is. Its tool for better compression of executables which could be used in data sensitive (Like , most people would agree with me that some times decrypting on our own local device could be better since it could be more predictable than waiting for seeders , because there are very less seeders)
Politely, but no.
It's a compression tool that is also used to mask malware, and you're proposing to expand it's use in a use case that's ALREADY coated in enough malware to give you herpes just by walking past your average tracker.
It's a bad idea from a security perspective, and it's not going to outperform a LZMA-based compression tool using a large dictionary (7zip, etc.) which also isn't fucking with binaries in a way that makes detecting and preventing malicious software more complicated for the average user, who typically knows absolutely zero about what's going on.
I had actually agreed with you , here was my initial comment , though I just wanted to look into upx github page more
new response:
He didn't, malware guys use UPX and it's true that antiviruses scream bloody murder when they see it. It's also true you can't see what's inside unless you have special tools to do so. UPX also has one huge downside, it's its RAM usage, due to it's inner workings it's unable to use optimisations that normal binaries can like page sharing.
okay so what alternative do you suggest which could be better used in exe formats I feel that unzipping from exe isn't the best solution to this problem
(like some exe contain some zip file inside them and extract them)
Just putting all your stuff in one big .7z so you can unpack it to directory then scan them all w/ AV.
well then you could still extract it using upx , (basically if I remember correctly , you use upx on one exe file to generate another (I think this is the intended use case of what I am suggesting) & then use antivirus on that. according to their website you can list, test and unpack your executables. Also, a checksum of both the compressed and uncompressed file is maintained internally.