Problem with antivirus and "idp generic".

[Gimbl]

Greetings!
First of all, I would like to apologize for my terrible English. Also, I apologize if someone has already raised a question on the same topic.
I ran into a problem with the work of the antivirus when playing Star Valor. It seems that I managed to solve this problem and I decided to share with you the details. I hope that it will be useful to some players. I hope this article will also help developers ... at least with something.

And so, here is my story. I will try to describe everything in detail: how the error occurred, how I tried to understand what was going wrong, and how I managed to solve it.

Before the appearance of the problem, I played for 5-6 hours. There were no errors and other problems. After completing the introductory series of tasks, I started exploring nearby solar systems. And suddenly, the game hung. The picture froze and the game had to be forcibly closed using the task manager. No error messages were received. I tried to start the game again, but Steam gave an error about the absence of the exe-file. After that, Steam tried to download the missing file, but the download started again and again without interruption. Again, no error messages have occurred (except for the Steam error).
At some point, I decided to restart my computer. After that, the missing file was uploaded and I was able to launch the game again. But after 30 minutes of the game, the same scenario was repeated: the picture froze, and the restart of the game gave an error about the missing file.
BUT!!!
This time my antivirus (Avast) showed me a message. Anti-Virus found the exe file infected and placed it in quarantine. When I looked at the quarantine list, I saw the two previous files: the first one that was loaded during the installation of the game, and the second that was loaded after the computer was restarted. According to the anti-virus, the reason for isolating was "idp generic".

I began to look for clues on the Internet. Most of the articles stated that "idp generic" can be found even in licensed programs and it is often a false alarm. It is noteworthy that this phenomenon is typical for users of Avast and AVG antiviruses.

And so, we found the source of the problems.
What did I do next? I added Star Valor to the exceptions and restored the isolated exe file. Then I checked the game folder with another antivirus (malwarebytes). It found no problems and threats.
After that, I was able to return to the game. Now I checked in the game for about 3-4 hours and there were no more problems.
At the moment I am trying to understand: why the problem with "idp generic" did not occur immediately after installing the game, and what is this "false virus"? I have never met a similar problem before.
In any case, at the moment the game is stable again.

I hope that this article will be useful to someone, and it will help developers to improve the game.

Despite the fact that the game is still under development, I liked it and I sincerely wish good luck to creators.

[Laious]

Hi Gimbl!

Thank you very much for taking the time to write it all down, in fact there WAS another user repporting a similar issue not long ago.
I still have no clue about what is causing it and the uploaded files are all clean, so it is probably a false alarm, or in some cases, other programs infecting the game .exe file. Your solution will probably help the next time someone has it.

Oh and my english is bad also, so we are ok there :)

[spacedog]

All I can say is that both of your English is about 1000000 times better than my Portuguese or Russian. (And FWIW your grammar is better than some people here in the U.S.)

[titanopteryx]

Antivirus programs are paranoid sometimes. Occasionally a game I play gets quarantined if they have no information about it stored yet. I actually switched from Avast to McAffee because Avast kept quarantining my games. McAffee isn't super but it's better than Avast for gaming.

[AtmaDarkwolf]

LOL I think these guys english is better than even mine is 80% of the time. (And I am completely unable to learn any other.. I lived with french speaking folk for 12 years and only learned 3-4 simple phrases, and took 3 years of mandarin Chinese and I can maybe say my name...)

So yea, lol I am quite amazed that both of you are NOT native english speakers with how well you type.

[spacedog]

Originally posted by titanopteryx:

Antivirus programs are paranoid sometimes.

I'm not sure if Star Valor's unity script code is being run as interpreted C#, or if it's being compiled down to native code during packaging. But code generation done by the interpreter at runtime will usually confuse AV engines until they immunize the executable (after it's been out for a few days). And then the problem can pop up again when a new version of the program is released that has a new hash.

The best thing you can do, if you trust there's no virus, is exactly what the OP did -- add it to the list of exclusions in the AV program.

[Crensh]

fyi: this is still an issue. flagged by Sophos.

[Laious]

I'm afraid there is not much to do about it, because it's an indie game and will ocasionaly get flagged as a false positive. :(

[ZeroAffex]

All you need to do (least with McAffee, am sure they are all similar) is to add the .exe file for this game to the AV exceptions list and you'll be set. I got a false positive too and investigated it. Completely safe, just get it excluded.

Edit: Had this happen with Triple A games too, so it's all good ;) Rare but happens.

[Ravenshadow]

Originally posted by Laious:

Hi Gimbl!

Thank you very much for taking the time to write it all down, in fact there WAS another user repporting a similar issue not long ago.
I still have no clue about what is causing it and the uploaded files are all clean, so it is probably a false alarm, or in some cases, other programs infecting the game .exe file. Your solution will probably help the next time someone has it.

Oh and my english is bad also, so we are ok there :)

i also have this problem.... and even though i added it to exceptions my antivirus (kasperky pro) deleted it yet again

[AvatarOfWar]

Could people post the name of the virus that is being reported? If its contains "Generic Trojan" or other similar wording, its probably a false positive from the heuristic scanner.

[AvatarOfWar]

So far I'm 0/2 for reading comprehension today, LOL. I missed that the virus was posted right there in the TITLE of the thread.

And its a generic name. I am 95% confident you can ignore it, although I couldn't tell you in the slightest *why* it was reported. Heuristic scanners try to look for code that do things a virus *might* try to do, but there are often legitimate reasons for legitimate code to d othose things as well.

[phaktory]

My software flagged the star valor EXE today because it said the executable wasn't signed which is what I suspect most people are really seeing.