so I saw
BitHeadz.Unity.Synth.Expander.1.3.3. on the sister site and ran it by VT and it cleared all sandboxes, but google and ikarus flagged one "Virus.Win32.HLLP.Sypon" . and passed everything else.

I'm wondering if this may be a false positive, it is an old release so who knows.

I am interested in it because I love Physical modeling a lot. And hadnt heard of this.
it says it's VST, but its also an "expander", so does that mean that "unity synth" is another separate plugin that is needed to use? I was sort of considering that unity synth might be a stock synth in some DAW that I don't use and would not be able to run this anyhow.
and
Generally speaking: am I being naive in considering the possibility that old releases would be more saferer because whatever hacktools they might contain are surely legacy by now. Or is it possible to still have them infiltrate modern systems?
Maybe that is incredibly simple and shortsighted because , as with this release, OLd soft can be gets posted here and there and may have been repacked with whatever modern shenannies there are to deploy. So maybe awful terrible reasoning. or do i have a point?

IS this (unknown to me) 'expander' any good? It has multiple engines in it apparently, and physical modeling is amazing. if it sucks though (or is toxic)
Anything else I may have looked over in this category that warrants testing?
I saw tassman posted recently which seems to have very little visibility except within
more niche softmodular groups. which is pretty unique and interesting.
I've also tried and enjoyed
most of the AAS stuff ; rackextensions like friktion , resonans, etc ; physical audio stuff; That one free PMS thing by quilcom, Modelonia (which is really good and hard to find too), knagalis is also hard to find but i like it alright; Uhhyou stuff; harptime pro; sakura;
Anything else i am overlooking?
thanks

 

it's a dropper. it will write into startup, entries into system.ini and win.ini, registry, and infects other files. It does not look difficult to remove manually in safe mode, but still time wasting.

It's not that old, from something like 2013. I would not track down a CIH and run it just to see what happens 20+ years later; unless that's the point. I don't share your interest in Physical Modeling synths though. To me, they usually are never as good as the other available synths from the same time period. Look at the sounds of Sculpture vs Alchemy (both stock in Logic) for a good example of this.

Do a quick search and see if you can find example of anyone using this currently for some sort of sounds you want to create. To me, I would chalk it up as a waste of time being the best possible outcome, and likely the only one.

 

 

Last edited: Oct 2, 2023

oh, CIH was just a fairly common pc virus around 2000-ish. It was also called Chernobyl and a few other names. It's just the first example I thought of, for something too old to supposedly run on any current Windows version. You were asking about old virii which should not affect current operating systems. I wouldn't want to test out the theory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIH_(computer_virus)

Alchemy is one of, if not; the nicest synths included for free with Logic. Sculpture is a physical modeling synth that is included free with Logic, and the difference in sounds and features are about as far as it gets. The results from using SWAM instruments are much better than Sculpture. They should sound at least like they came from the same decade; but really it is like comparing Serum to Rubber Duck.

I think that result you got on the file is too specific to be a false positive and that it is infected. If it was less specific and just said it was a dropper, keygen, crypter, or a polymorph type of malware; that is when you see more likely misidentification. If that sort of thing (digital forensics) is interesting to you, look into Autopsy. It is part of Sleuthkit. Running random stuff on your DAW computer is not going to go well, and most likely end up just a waste of time anyway. Many old files are infected, and it's not even on purpose.

 

Last edited: Oct 2, 2023

Sobering, but seemingly deep advice there. I will potentially look into sleuthkit if i' get scientissy or something haha . So, I got some others that are also coming up with various little fuckers.. a couple from magesy.. that site is haunted.
What is a good, like, lightweight (seriously! what the fuck? imposbiible ) on-call (i think thats what that kind of app is called) On-demand whatever. THere used to be something called housecall by trend micro which really helped me quitre a bit... but something like that that is comprehensive and doesn't need to be installed, then reistered / validated and then have multiple daemons running around eating everything, and restricting access to ANYTHING! that isn't ntflix. Just a thorough and comprehensive scanner for my system (or single folders /diles at a time if need be . ) is there something like that? Yeah yeah yeah i know i know.. "Just use windows defender adn don't be stupid and youll be fine".. sure.. I'm not asking for windows defender . Someone who reads this will have wanted the same bases covered at some point, i'm sure, and will speak my language and hopefully sort me out ..

 

I do not use Windows, but what about using a current equivalent of Sandboxie? Or even a VM. You can get NIST images of Windows and run old programs like that, so your real OS remains unaffected. You close the VM and it's gone. TrendMicro is still a good solution for companies, but using something like that can become cpu-taxing. Many of the malware authors have gotten very good at AV/heuristics evasion, or you wouldn't see very many major institutions getting successfully hit with crypters and other ransomware. By at least sticking to using software that many other people still currently use, programs have many sets of eyes checking them out and leaving current feedback about them. By digging into old abandonware, you are pretty much on your own.

I would not trust that other site you mentioned, at all. Not to say they are malicious, but obviously they are still serving old files with problems, not rechecking them, or not removing them.

 

Not malicious.. just irresponsible lol
but clone , what wouLD you use? Or rather DO you use? because you have that air of wisdom about you. Getting some real Big Disk energy from you.

 

that's funny. I use Logic as my DAW so MacOS on Mac computers. One is old and running High Sierra and one is macbook running Ventura. You still have to be careful running random stuff from the internet, but it's obviously much less bad stuff floating around for Macs. Most malware is annoying spyware stuff, browser hijacks and things like that.Most of those old Windows virus would try to infect every possible file to spread. A lot of PC users now run no traditional antivirus because the threats have changed. They don't care about an infected machine sending out a million emails, they care about money.