When I went to installed the Unreal Engine 5.5 version (on a Mac), my anti-virus program flagged this file: “C5NG1616603GDHHU10D2KF3LILF… OSX/Pirrit.ext”. Did anyone else get a virus flag? Does the 5.5.1 version still install this file? And does it still have a virus?
What is your antivirus?
You can always go to VIRUSTOTAL website (multiscanner used by antivirus industry, kind of official tool for most AV).
So go to virustotal, upload your file, and see detections.
This file (your alleged virus) is probably false positive.
Ps.
Some years ago (6-7) there was false positive in unreal 4.xx . I did as i wrote above.
Uploaded to virus total, there were several detection for any project created with unreal.
All because back then when packaging your project unreal created installer that had all executables like dlls and programs etc, all saved into single file back to back (like joined together).
And that behavior was quite common in backdoors (and adware) back then. So on virus total it had 10-20 detections (most than half). I made post here about it, but i did not followed it, and did not check after some time.
And false positives happens, because somebody at AV company makes mistake. Then if its respected AV, others (mostly) blindly add same detection, and if nobody complains it stays there.
oh and btw:
Pirrit.ext is malwarebytes (they are trigger happy) for ADWARE, not a virus. And i realy doubt that Epic would add adware to unreal.
Thank you for replying.
I am a Mac person and I use Internet security with its NetBarrier and VirusBarrier not malwarebytes to catch virus’ etc.
The virus appeared when the 58 GB of content was being installed. So I guess it was a file of some sort, not the actual Unreal Engine program.
Thanks for the tip about Virustotal. Problem is - I don’t have the file anymore since I reformatted my system partition. — I am overly paranoid!
I am a little bit leery about installing UE again. But hopefully the 5.5.1 version has fixed the problem. Here’s hoping.
SO PEOPLE OUT THERE - I take it no one has been flagged with a virus while installing UE 5.5 or 5.51 (along with its content). Right?
Thanks for replying
Well I just tried installing the 5.5.1 version and had the same virus alert! I guess I will stay with the 5.4.4 version until the 6 version comes out. Maybe the virus won’t be in that one.
Did you install this directly from the Epic Launcher? There should be no virus issues with UE Official Software unless you were downloading it from a third party or something like that. It could be a network file or something and the anti-virus you’re using is overly sensitive to that type of file. I’m not familiar with that AV personally. But, I’ve saw AV’s flag all kinds of things that aren’t viruses as viruses. I’d report it to your anti-virus provider if you downloaded 5.5 directly from the Epic Launcher so that they can go in and see why it’s flagging the file.
I am almost 100% sure that is not a virus, it is false positive (ie. mistake made by scanner).
So update detection database for scanner (it should be doing that about every day, but update just in case).
Try to find which file is detected (that may be hard).
Also because it is ADWARE detection, sometimes this happens when files inside are packed with certain popular installers (same installer that real adware uses). And adware usually just makes unwanted popus or injects its own ads into browser. Annoying but not really dangerous.
So you safe to use 5.5.1 even if your scanner complains.
However best would be if you could double check file that is detected on virustotal, and complain to your scanner producer.
And last time (in my case) it was way Epic packaged and created unreal installer that triggered detection back then.