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It's especially bizarre that ROMhacks would be suppressed from IA, when IA has played host to plain-old 100%-infringing ROMs for years now, with nobody seeming
by derefr 1y ago
It's especially bizarre that ROMhacks would be suppressed from IA, when IA has played host to plain-old 100%-infringing ROMs for years now, with nobody seeming to care.
(I will not directly link to these collections, for the fates are cruel. I'll just say that these IA collections are 'complete' per-console ROM collection archives created by "GoodMerge", a ROM collection validation and repacking tool — and are named very intuitively given that.)
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- CBMPET2001 1y agoPer the post, the takedowns are due to false positive malware flags, not because of copyright takedowns. So I guess the unmodified, 100% genuine ROMs don't trip the malware detection, whereas the mods do?
- waltbosz 1y agoI half read that but didn't absorb it fully. I wonder what about a ROM matches the signature of malware.
- shazbotter 1y agoA ROM does not. A ROMhack, however, might. A ROMhack injects code into a ROM, the same way a virus or Trojan might inject code into an executable.
- fluoridation 1y agoI thought ROM hacks were just modified ROMs, not programs that modify ROMs. In any case, that still wouldn't make much sense. Surely an automatic patcher is a pretty trivial piece of software, system-wise. It just reads a binary file and writes out a different binary file after doing some in-memory manipulations. Why would a an AV flag such a program? I don't buy this explanation. EDIT: Furthermore, what's the proposed workflow? Does the Internet Archive run AVs over its collections? There's no way, right? That would be a massive compute expense.
- wolrah 1y ago> I thought ROM hacks were just modified ROMs, not programs that modify ROMs. Distributing a modified ROM is as much copyright infringement as distributing the base ROM itself, so generally hacks are distributed as just the patch file and you have to provide your own copy of the base ROM and patch it from there. It sounds like this site is packing the two together, and the patchers are causing the flagging issues. That also to me seems like the simple solution is to not do that and just distribute the patches without the software and have a note in the description pointing to a separate source for the patcher. > Surely an automatic patcher is a pretty trivial piece of software, system-wise. It just reads a binary file and writes out a different binary file after doing some in-memory manipulations. Why would a an AV flag such a program? I don't buy this explanation. A virus that wants to infect other executables on the system is going to have patching code in it where it's relatively rare in "legitimate" software so it makes sense for antimalware heuristics to find it suspicious.
- fluoridation 1y ago>A virus that wants to infect other executables on the system is going to have patching code in it where it's relatively rare in "legitimate" software so it makes sense for antimalware heuristics to find it suspicious. Sure, but what an AV is going to look for is code that manipulates executable files, not random binary files. If the patchers are designed to apply patch files to ROMs rather than having the patches embedded then it makes even less sense that they get flagged.
- shazbotter 1y agoAn executable is a random binary file...
- fluoridation 1y agoEvery file is binary. So are AVs going to start flagging every program that does anything to any file?
- 1y ago
- jonhohle 1y agoIt’s probably too long form and stream of consciousness, but a few weeks ago I looked at GameShark “codes” and what they look like in when we having matching decompiled code and can we decompile a GameShark modded function. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h4398rWE1kg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h4398rWE1kg Short answer is that no compiler would produce similar code and it’s probably a red flag that there’s odd dead code, jumps, or places where padding or nops are expected but there is code. Rom hacks are more in depth, but often play the same tricks because they need to fit into possibly sections they shouldn’t exist in (say, code in BSS), encode instructions in a way that known compilers wouldn’t, long jumps to odd places.
- immibis 1y agoNo virus scanner understands how to run game console executables and could detect unusual code layout in ROMs, nor do they want to because those aren't viruses.
- jonhohle 1y agoI’m not sure which rom hacks were being flagged, but most consoles use CPUs that were also at one point used in computers or phones as well. Is it likely that a virus scanner is going to flag a MIPS binary (PS1, PS2, N64)? Probably not. But what’s the difference to a virus scanner whether an x86, PowerPC, or ARM binary is meant for a console, phone, or a computer. Or more simply, it could be packed with a README that links back to a modding group that hosts stuff on a site with malware or other “hacker” tools.
- VoidWhisperer 1y agoThe mention that it is the patchers for the ROMs that AVs/Antimalware are flagging, presumably due to them employing similar methods to those employed by malware.
- duskwuff 1y agoIA has always been a little haphazard with regards to copyright. Console ROMs aren't the half of it; they have an absolutely massive collection of old movies and TV shows.
- boomboomsubban 1y agoIA works the same way as much of the internet, they allow users to upload whatever and respond to DMCA claims.
- dvh 1y agoCongrats for making 45 millionth comment on HN
- bitlax 1y agoLol I'm not the only one tracking this.
- boomboomsubban 1y agoWhat do you mean?
- dvh 1y agoYour comment was 45 millionth one. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45000000 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45000000