Possible virus issue
I am hosting remote sessions for students self isolating. One student has informed me he has a virus on his computer. Can this virus be spread by him joining my world with other students?
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Hi there John Birch. I'm sorry to hear that your student has a virus on his computer. I recommend taking the safe route here and advising him not to play multiplayer until the virus is removed from his computer. I hope this helps!
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Maybe but no. Because
Generally speaking, an item within a game is just a block of values telling the game what item to show to the player, its stats, level, attributes, etc. There is nothing inherently harmful about this. The only time it could even possibly become an outlet for malware is through player customization, in which the player somehow finds a way to write arbitrary code somewhere into that block of values. That’s anywhere between extremely difficult and impossible depending on how well the game in question was made in regards to bug testing.
Even if someone were to stuff executable code into an item, they would still need to find a way to make it run on the machine it reaches, and then they would also have to figure out how to make it effective within the limitations of the game application’s permissions on that machine (most games typically don’t have admin rights). Why go through all that when there are better ways to spread a piece of malware?
There are many exploits in older games on consoles (Twilight Hack for the Wii and soundhax for the 3DS are the first that come to my mind) that allow arbitrary code to run, which is what enabled people to install software like the Homebrew Channel or custom firmware. However, there are some key differences here. First, each of these exploits has been for the benefit of the user. They usually are a first step towards modifying the console in question to be able to run unlicensed software and/or backups of games. Second, they tend to rely less on in-game items and more on hacked save files that are modified to put code in just the right places to be executed upon loading the save, or soon thereafter. And of course, none of these can be considered viruses, or even malware really.
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