Question about some short little animation files

October 26, 2008 9:28 PM

Question about those animations included with *cough*downloaded*cough* files....

So, uh, a "friend" of mine likes to download files from places on the internet. Files that are released by groups of other people. Now, these groups of people sometimes add little exe files in the download that have animations with thanks, greetings, 8-bit music, etc. My question is twofold:

1 - Is there a collection of these animations somewhere on the web that I can download? I'm working on a paper researching the origins of some of these groups, and the animations (or, ideally, the original exe files) would be a boon to me. I have searched high and low, and can't find any that are in one place.

2 - What is the proper name for these files?

Thanks so much!

posted by omnipotentq to Computers & Internet (14 answers total)

Best answer: I haven't seen them lately, but it sounds like a continuation of the old demo scene.

The crack intro page has links to sites which appear to archive these, but I haven't checked any of them.
posted by markr at 9:37 PM on October 26, 2008

Best answer: That's a cracktro.
posted by majick at 9:38 PM on October 26, 2008

Best answer: pouet.net has an enormous collection of demos, going back more than 20 years. As far as I know, the software piracy connection is largely historical -- these days, demos are more of a competitive visual art form than anything else. (Cracktros make up less than 10% of pouet's database.)
posted by teraflop at 9:43 PM on October 26, 2008

What is the proper name for these files?

"Trojans". You must be insane to run those things; anything could happen to your computer.
posted by Class Goat at 9:55 PM on October 26, 2008 [3 favorites]

A respected group isn't going to ruin its reputation by distributing a trojan in its cracktro.
posted by dunkadunc at 10:57 PM on October 26, 2008 [5 favorites]

Watch some notable demos and then get some background on the scene that spawned it all.

Here's a talk by Trixter that you might like.

Demos are what happened when cracktros went legit and spun off from their cracker origins. Goat's right, running cracktros is sorta nuts. Know and trust your source.
posted by Myself at 11:01 PM on October 26, 2008

A respected group isn't going to ruin its reputation by distributing a trojan in its cracktro.
posted by dunkadunc at 10:57 PM on October 26 [3 favorites +] [!]

I would be extremely careful about downloading and running these programs.
It doesnt matter what the "respected group" releases, someone else may add the trojan and re-release. In my experience about 40-50% of what you download from torrents will have a virus or a trojan of some kind.

And if you think your safe because you have anti-virus software installed, you need to learn about rootkits.

http://www.antirootkit.com/
posted by MetaPenguin at 12:27 AM on October 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

50%? You need a new torrent site.
posted by markr at 1:16 AM on October 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

What class goat & metapenguin said. Maybe not 50% of them will be bad, but a significant enough proportion of them to make it a really, really bad idea.
posted by juv3nal at 1:31 AM on October 27, 2008

If you absolutely can't live without knowing what that random .exe you've just downloaded appears to do, run it in a VM. Or at the very least, in a limited user account that you reserve for testing these things out, after which you should reboot and delete the test account's entire folder under C:\Documents and Settings.

Running unknown .exe files with Computer Administrator privileges is unwise.
posted by flabdablet at 5:06 AM on October 27, 2008

Sandboxie (for peace of mind running unknown exes)
posted by katrielalex at 7:32 AM on October 27, 2008

"In my experience about 40-50% of what you download from torrents will have a virus or a trojan of some kind."

Really??? REALLY?

All I can say is...an emphatic "NOT!"

There are reputable torrent sites...many of them. I've never, ever, not once, never ever ever, gotten an infected torrent file, and I download em daily.
posted by newfers at 7:33 AM on October 27, 2008

A respected group isn't going to ruin its reputation by distributing a trojan in its cracktro.

Honor among thieves, eh? You must be joking.
posted by Class Goat at 10:28 AM on October 27, 2008

newfers, your likelihood of getting an infection is strongly influenced by what kind of stuff you're downloading.

If you're downloading stuff daily, it seems likely to me that most of what you're getting is video or sound. As far as I know, there's currently no reliable way to embed executable content in a video or sound file (there was, at one point, an exploit that let people infect Windows boxes via JPEG pictures, using a fault in Windows's jpeg rendering code, but that fault's been fixed).

But we're not talking about video or sound here; we're talking about executables (.exe files). And the fact is that the easiest way to take control of somebody else's computer is to persuade them to run, in a user account that has administrative privileges, an .exe of unknown provenance. And since game (or other software) installers are typically expected to require admin privileges, they're a natural host for trojans. So there are lots of them out there. Lots.

Don't install cracked games, kids. Just say No.

By the way, in my experience there's a far greater chance of a family PC catching Internet Clap if there's a teenager in the house with an admin account on the PC, which only goes to show that digital abstinence programs are not really any more use than the other kind. Sigh.
posted by flabdablet at 6:15 PM on October 27, 2008