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Are .exe files safe?

Asked by Andrew Jenkins Mar 28, 2022 1.7K views 1 answer

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I recently downloaded a .exe file from a person's github. I scanned the file in virustotal.com and it showed none of the antiviruses detected a virus. When I checked its behaviour, it had access to network adapters. Nevertheless, I opened the .exe but it just opened a terminal and showed something and disappeared. When I asked the guy who sent it to me, he said the program just hacked my personal information from my computer. But the antivirus shows no risk. Can anybody help me with this?

Giving the file link below: I have a Windows 10 PC and I was connected to the internet at the time of the incident and the program ran in administrator mode.

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Best Answer · By JanBask Cyber Security Expert

Answered on Mar 28, 2022

Are .exe files safe can be answered as - Online antivirus scanners detect known malware. New malware is not known to them, so it is absolutely possible to have malware that is not detected by any antivirus.
An antivirus installed on your PC can use some more heuristics to detect potentially bad behaviour of running software, but this is far from perfect.
You should absolutely not run executable software which you don't trust, and never run anything that is not 100% trustworthy with administrator permissions.
If you look at the source in the repo, this is pretty harmless, it just sends your IP and some system data to a telegram channel. Probably created by a bored teenager.
If the source code actually is the one used to create the executable you ran, that is. I didn't bother to verify that.

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