The Mysterious Case of ".DS_Store" and "Hi_Mom.png" in Unreal Engine's Depths

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hi_mom.png!
I just had the most unusual experience while setting up Unreal Engine from source on my Apple M1 Max, running Sonoma 14.2.1. Thought I’d share it here and see if anyone can shed some light on this.

Here’s the rundown:
Cloning from GitHub:
Started by cloning Unreal Engine from git@github.com:EpicGames/UnrealEngine.git.

Running the Setup:
Clicked Setup.command as usual. During this, a process kicked off: GitDependencies (/Users/User.Name/Worktree/private/Unreal/UnrealEngine/Engine/Binaries/DotNET/GitDependencies/osx-arm64/GitDependencies).

The Mysterious Discovery:
This is where it gets weird. In the directory /Users/User.Name/Worktree/private/Unreal/UnrealEngine/Engine/Extras/Maya_AnimationRiggingTools/ArtToolsOSX/MayaTools/General/Icons/ART/Thumbnails/, I found a .DS_Store directory. Yes, a directory, not the typical file it should be.

Strange Files:
Inside this directory were two files: hi_mom.png and hi_mom_small.png. The Thumbnails folder itself is filled with oddly named folders like “Alex Project,” “demo,” “Hello,” “newproject,” “newproject2,” and others all containing similar images in varying numbers and names. See here and here.

I found an old Unreal Engine forum post linking to the original repo(different problem though). However, the link leads to a 404 error, and the account associated with it is no longer available.

So, I’m Curious:

  • Why is .DS_Store a directory here? Isn’t it supposed to be a file that macOS uses for storing folder attributes? This is normally a bad sign as this tactic is used to masquerade payloads and such.

  • Anyone has seen this or anything related? Seems to me, that was some kind of private project(based on the README), then got absorbed by epic, but its just a badly maintained/cleaned repo?

If anyone has any insights, theories, or similar experiences, I’d love to hear them. Maybe it’s just a harmless quirk, maybe something malicious, but it’s certainly piqued my curiosity!

Best and thanks

P.S. If anyone from Epic Games is lurking around, a little insight would be unreal!

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