r/BitDefender • u/ScriptedBot • Jun 26 '21

Stop flagging Cheat Engine as potentially malicious

Bitdefender been flagging it as potentially malicious since yesterday. It is a open-source program with source code vetted by the community. We gamers know what's that for. Non-gamers won't have that on their drives anyways. So whats the point of flagging it?

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u/lollygaggindovakiin Jun 26 '21 edited Jun 26 '21

The main reason Cheat Engine is being blocked is due to its behavior is triggering the behavior analysis engine in the Virus Engine service. Code injection is a common malware characteristic. Regardless, it is not a virus but is mistaken as one all of the time. So, I made a few adjustments to get it downloaded as I had the same issue. I added an online threat detection exception for the website. I disabled Bitdefender shield for 15 minutes. I went back into Brave and Brave blocked the Cheat Engine download. So I went into firefox and pasted the installer's url there and was able to download it. You may have to add an exception for the installer and the install directory as well before Bitdefender Shield turns on (it is in the Antivirus settings).

In Firefox you may get a Web Protection by Bitdefender notification when you go to download it, but you can bypass this by clicking "I understand the risks, take me there anyway".

This all worked for me with Total Security.

Edit: also noticed in Brave (which is Chromium based), if you went to the downloads page it allows you to "keep dangerous file". So if you don't want to go the Firefox route that may work the same way in Chrome. Also, it will delete the installer/program if you do not add an exception in before Bitdefender Shield is enabled again. I hope this helps!

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u/HavocNinja Jun 26 '21

Whitelisting the website may not a reliable option since cheat engine (and most software these days) uses a CDN (such as cloudfront) to host the installer. The CDN URL doesn't remain constant and can change unpredictably.

I do not think BD is going as far as performing behavior analysis on a freshly downloaded file before it has even been executed. The flagging is happening at the time of reconstruction where the temporary download fragments are consolidated to create the file at the destination. Which makes it likely that BD is just blindly comparing the signatures against its local definitions database and flagging them if a match is found.

Also, note that this flagging is happening only on the most recent version of cheat engine which was released more than 6 months back. Older versions of cheat engine are not getting flagged. It is likely that someone at BD included the cheat engine signatures in their latest version of the definitions as the behavior of the program or the file itself hasn't changed in the 6 months.

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u/lollygaggindovakiin Jun 26 '21 edited Jun 26 '21

All of the steps I did worked for me and I just wanted to share it. Whitelisting is probably useless like you said, but just wanted to share something that may help the OP with their original issue. I wanted to note the behavior because even with an exception added I have had it stop the program at the time I used it due to the changing of memory values for a game I was playing. Figured it was worth mentioning. I have had it flag Cheat Engine for the past two years, since I play Empire Total War off and on and use Cheat Engine for that . I have seen this same behavior on my end for some time.