Real Viruses?

With all these viruses can you get real viruses on your real computer from downloading programs from paste-bin?

(Sorry for being a noob :D/>)

no.

should I expand on that? maybe.

ComputerCraft runs in a sandboxed environment, the scripts cannot be executed outside the computer it is meant to.

It is however possible for someone to download a malicious executable file through computercraft, though the server owner needs to be careless enough to run it. I heard that someone trolled a server owner by downloading a real virus that the computer's antivirus picked up, so unless you are extremely careless, it shouldn't be possible.

It might be possible to get one using php lookups. I don't know how it works but I know people use it to not have a wireless modem on their turtle. So using that way, a script might be downloaded on a computer. But it still needs execution. But then again, I don't know what those guys could and couldn't do using php in computercraft.

Technically you can, but they'll basically be harmless. i.e. making infinite folders-within-folders.

Computercraft can certainly download files in binary mode, enabling people to download malicious software. However, ComputerCraft CANNOT execute those files.

Even if you somehow wrote an environment to execute the malware, you'd still be running it within the ComputerCraft sandbox, where if you tried to exit the sandbox, the server/client would crash.

The end user must be stupid enough to execute the files downloaded outside of the sandbox.

So in short, yes, you can download real-world viruses, but ComputerCraft cannot execute them, nor can they auto-execute.

Cranium

Cranium, on 07 April 2014 - 07:44 PM said:

So in short, yes, you can download real-world viruses, but ComputerCraft cannot execute them, nor can they auto-execute.

but what if you would download an autorun.inf file and wait for a server reboot?

blipman17, on 07 April 2014 - 07:57 PM said:

but what if you would download an autorun.inf file and wait for a server reboot?

nine times out of ten a server reboot does not mean the computer is rebooting, and regardless your computercraft folder is not the root folder of a volume(hardrive, cd, etc.)

CometWolf, on 07 April 2014 - 08:08 PM said:

blipman17, on 07 April 2014 - 07:57 PM said:

but what if you would download an autorun.inf file and wait for a server reboot?

nine times out of ten a server reboot does not mean the computer is rebooting, and regardless your computercraft folder is not the root folder of a volume(hardrive, cd, etc.)

And we are thinking way to complicated.
This would probably not happen.
Getting a virus while downloading torrents is more likely.

blipman17, on 07 April 2014 - 07:57 PM said:

Cranium

Cranium, on 07 April 2014 - 07:44 PM said:

So in short, yes, you can download real-world viruses, but ComputerCraft cannot execute them, nor can they auto-execute.

but what if you would download an autorun.inf file and wait for a server reboot?

autorun.inf will not execute on server restart.

Right, yep, I understand that all, yep. (Not really tho ;)/> )

So no if I don't open any files outside of computer craft that are in the computer craft folder and have anti-virus and a mac? Right?

(Sorry for being a noob :D/>)

Well, just be smart. Don't click any files you don't trust, don't browse to internet sites you don't trust, etc.
Smart computer use goes a long way.

Likely more so than any other protection, in fact.

Relying on anything other then your own common sense is plain dangerous. Take the whole "Mac user mentality", for example - the stereotypes not only buy the line that "Macs don't get viruses", they ignore the inconvenient truth that the majority of malware these days doesn't take the form of a virus anyway.

Then they go off and take liberties online and wonder why it ends badly.

With that said, my observations suggest to me that that most common form of malware these days comes in via ad banners. Most web sites don't have direct control over their banners, but rather these are supplied to a centralised provider who in turn gets to display them on a whole bunch of websites (Dan doesn't hand-pick the ads on this site, for eg). If a malicious ad gets through the checking process, then hey presto! That's a whole bunch of web sites distributing that malware, giving a whole lot of incentive to use that method of installation.

Hence I for one consider an ad blocker to be essential security software.

Cranium, on 08 April 2014 - 03:06 AM said:

Well, just be smart. Don't click any files you don't trust, don't browse to internet sites you don't trust, etc.
Smart computer use goes a long way.

So… these forums, youtube (tutorials) and only paste bin would be alright?

Bomb Bloke, on 08 April 2014 - 03:36 AM said:

Likely more so than any other protection, in fact.

Relying on anything other then your own common sense is plain dangerous. Take the whole "Mac user mentality", for example - the stereotypes not only buy the line that "Macs don't get viruses", they ignore the inconvenient truth that the majority of malware these days doesn't take the form of a virus anyway.

Then they go off and take liberties online and wonder why it ends badly.

With that said, my observations suggest to me that that most common form of malware these days comes in via ad banners. Most web sites don't have direct control over their banners, but rather these are supplied to a centralised provider who in turn gets to display them on a whole bunch of websites (Dan doesn't hand-pick the ads on this site, for eg). If a malicious ad gets through the checking process, then hey presto! That's a whole bunch of web sites distributing that malware, giving a whole lot of incentive to use that method of installation.

Hence I for one consider an ad blocker to be essential security software.

What do you mean by 'Likely more so than any other protection, in fact.'?

And how safe are these programs on the computer craft forums?

Ric3, on 08 April 2014 - 03:56 AM said:

What do you mean by 'Likely more so than any other protection, in fact.'?

It follows on from the text directly above it. If in doubt about a given page of writing, read left to right, top to bottom. ;)/>

Ric3, on 08 April 2014 - 03:56 AM said:

And how safe are these programs on the computer craft forums?

Oh, most of them will make your computer catch fire.

Seriously though, it would be trivial to come up with a script that asks users to enter login information for eg their MineCraft account for phishing purposes, put it up as a paste, and link to it here - you'd think that a regular forum reader would raise the alarm, but there are obvious methods around this that I won't expand upon for obvious reasons. Suffice to say that no one here (from the newest user to the site owner) is liable for what happens to you if you run anything you find here.

Again, this isn't a problem if you apply your own common sense. Make up your own mind as to the credibility of a given coder, and if in doubt, you can always read a given script before you run it. As a general rule, most people aren't bad, nor do they even want to be.

Alright thanks.