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The creator of the Space Invaders game that was categorised as a Trojan by Symantec has hit back at claims that it is malware.

Speaking with SC Magazine, 'Lose/Lose' creator Zach Gage claimed that he was aware and actually happy that anti-virus vendors were detecting Lose/Lose as malware, even though Lose/Lose actually is not malware, since malware means maliciously designed software, and Lose/Lose was never designed to intentionally hurt people.

He described Lose/Lose as simply 'potentially dangerous software', and said: "A lot of companies have decided it was malware, which I'm cool with, although I don't think it's accurate.

"To be honest, I may have made the mistake by releasing it without contacting anti-virus companies first, but considering nobody has ever emailed me upset about having lost files, I think it's pretty safe to say the warnings were sufficient.

"Now that there are warnings and anti-virus protection I don't think the game will accidentally hurt anyone. But as I said, it's not a Trojan, and I'm uncomfortable with it being used as part of Symantec's marketing in such an explosive fear-inspiring way."

http://www.scmagazin...rticle/157110/?

See also what Sophos have said:

Last week, SophosLabs released detection for OSX/LoseGame-A and following Symantec's publishing detection (which they call OSX.Loosemaque) there has been some controversy about whether this is a game or malware.

From my point of view this is malware. Why?

Answers is in http://www.sophos.co...hoslabs/?p=7292

And from Trend Micro:

Lose/Lose: Kill an Alien, Delete a File

Anyone who has ever played a video game-whether in an arcade, using a -gaming console, or on a PC-knows how a good kill can get one all excited and pumped up. Games that involve killing certain entities give us the thrill of being in such an exhilarating situation, without suffering any serious consequence. A certain Mac OS X game called Lose/Lose has been getting attention for its rather controversial effects.

The game, created by Zach Gage, somewhat resembles the format of the popular game Space Invaders, wherein the player is represented by a spacecraft and the goal is to kill the aliens placed all over the screen. Gage's game, however, has a different twist, which has been causing quite a stir.

The new twist in Lose/Lose is that the aliens in the game-the ones that the player must kill to stay in the game-represent random files in the user's system. Whenever the user kills an alien, the file the alien represents is deleted. Should the user refuse to kill the aliens, he/she will lose and the game itself will be deleted.

This interesting consequence of the game is clearly stated in Gage's website where the game can be downloaded.

Gage describes his creation as a means to answer the question: "Why do we assume that because we are given a weapon and awarded for using it, that doing so is right?" Curious intentions or not, however, the game presents high risks and may be very easily abused. A user who may have acquired the file without knowing its effects may end up with a large number of deleted critical files.

The file has thus been classified as a malware and is now detected as OSX_LOSEGAM.A.

http://blog.trendmic...-delete-a-file/

http://msmvps.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=1737789

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