False Positive Trojan?

[ElCid]

So, after I recently heard that Resident Evil 5 got a patch that fixed the pesky Microsoft Store issue or whatever on Windows 10, I decided to install it again last week.

All fine and dandy. Played plenty of matches online and had fun. However, yesterday, after I ran my anti-virus (I do it at least once a week), it caught a supposed Trojan-C in my Windows temp folder. I instantly panicked, but took all typical measures and checked VirusTotal, which pretty much confirmed it was a false positive.

But what does that have to do with Resident Evil 5? Well, I ran my anti-virus around four more times over the night after the incident, just to be certain it was indeed a false positive; caught nothing. Then I played a couple of hours of Resident Evil 5 online, and before going to bed, I ran the anti-virus again and another false positive "Trojan" popped! It can't be a coincidence.

When it clicked to me that it happened after playing Resident Evil 5, I made a small research, and found reports here dating from <2015, of players' anti-viruses flagging the game's files as false positive Trojans. I'm not sure if those cases are similar to mine (they were most related to the launcher while mine was a temp file on Windows), but again, it can't be a coincidence.

I'm usually very careful with suspicious links and downloads, and the only thing I did differently last week was download Resident Evil 5 again, so I'm very inclined to think that it's what is causing these false positives. And given the fact this kind of thing happened before to other players, more than proof.

I don't use any mods nor Trainers for the game, which I know sometimes can indeed have viruses.

Anyone else recently experienced this kind of issue after playing the game? I use Spybot Search and Destroy, by the way.

[Nikolay]

A modder or someone more experienced is more than welcome to correct me, but as far as I know, the temporary folder has nothing to do with RE5, nothing by a long shot. Besides, most if not all anti-virus software can pick up anything game related as a false positive, it has been happening since the dawn of time itself.

If the game was full of malware and viruses, plenty of controversy would've surrounded CAPCOM by now seeing as RE5 is still in their #3 best selling games, and the game was most likely going to be pulled out of the Steam Store for further inspection until further notice.

If I were you, I would pay attention to what I download online, more importantly where I download it from. If you're using mods for the game - something far more likely to be a threat to your PC, make sure you download them from (semi) popular, well-known and respected modding sites / boards instead of obscure, almost unknown to the general playerbase or rather fresh looking sites / boards.

( only exception being the REModdingBoards which have had a virus warning on their site for 4-5 months for whatever reason at this point, have downloaded a few mods from there myself since without a single issue )

[ElCid]

Originally posted by Nick:

A modder or someone more experienced is more than welcome to correct me, but as far as I know, the temporary folder has nothing to do with RE5, nothing by a long shot. Besides, most if not all anti-virus software can pick up anything game related as a false positive, it has been happening since the dawn of time itself.

I've thought about that too, regarding the temp folder. It doesn't make sense but it was too much of a coincidence.

Originally posted by Nick:

If I were you, I would pay attention to what I download online, more importantly where I download it from. If you're using mods for the game - something far more likely to be a threat to your PC, make sure you download them from (semi) popular, well-known and respected modding sites / boards instead of obscure, almost unknown to the general playerbase or rather fresh looking sites / boards.

That's the thing, I don't even use mods on Resident Evil 5 nor I've been visiting weird links or downloading anything lately out of the usual. Last week the only thing I literally download was Resident Evil 5.

Either way, I did a test today and didn't play the game for the whole day, and run my anti-virus multiple times through the day and I was clean. I appreciate your reply, nevertheless.

[ElCid]

Originally posted by pROSERPHINA:

If this happens again, I hope you could take screenshot and post it as non-game specific or RE5 artwork, so we could get more information in detail.

Sure thing, I'll keep an eye to that. I've been running Spyware Search and Destroy every few hours since yesterday and didn't catch anything else. I didn't play the game anymore to test it out.

But in both occasions it happened it was exclusively in the Windows Temp folder (C:\Users\%User%\AppData\Local\Temp), and both files started with "evb", first time it was evbC52E.tmp and the second time it was evb4860.tmp. They were flagged as "Trojan-C", but I've uploaded both files to VirusTotal and they were clean, so definitely false positives.

Again, I haven't downloaded anything out of the usual, and both times I got these false positives it was after playing Resident Evil 5. Could be just a coincidence, but who knows. Maybe Steam does create some kind of temp files in the Windows folder regarding handling save files or something. I'm also not using any mods nor Trainers.