This is a question for Frontier Devs really. First a confession for which I hope I'm not flamed into cinders. I'm a former employee of Symantec, makers of Norton (everything). I haven't worked there for about 6 years now, but for over 15 years I worked in their Support teams.
Old habits die hard and when I saw this thread in the EDC Facebook group, it made me think. (You'll need to be a member of the group to see the thread I guess). For those who can't see it, essentially an Elite player (not me) updated the game on April 29th and Norton Security popped up a "reputation" warning, advising him to "block" traffic from elitedangerous64.exe. Specifically, it's advising him to block the traffic that sets up UPnP devices to allow (other) traffic through the router.
Now, if memory serves (and it is a rusty memory), Norton's "Reputation" engine, probably like other desktop security software, takes into account a number of factors (amongst other things) when deciding whether something is safe.
For some reason, as far as I can tell, while Frontier digitally sign the Launcher executable, the elitedangerous64.exe is NOT digitally signed. I cannot fathom out why not.
So this gets me wondering... Norton's user base, particularly in the "not-so-technical-middle-aged-and-like-a-deal-at-PCWorld/BestBuy-or-don't-know-how-to-uninstall-OEM-software" demographic is HUGE.
Could this be part of why (as I understand it) many ED users have had problems with connections? I know there will be many other factors, but I thought this was worth raising in case it helped in the ongoing research into connectivity issues.
If there is a solid reason for not digitally signing the 64 bit executable, so be it. I completely accept the fact that I could be wrong about this whole thing!
Please don't flame me all you flamy types! Only trying to help make this awesome game even better.
Old habits die hard and when I saw this thread in the EDC Facebook group, it made me think. (You'll need to be a member of the group to see the thread I guess). For those who can't see it, essentially an Elite player (not me) updated the game on April 29th and Norton Security popped up a "reputation" warning, advising him to "block" traffic from elitedangerous64.exe. Specifically, it's advising him to block the traffic that sets up UPnP devices to allow (other) traffic through the router.
Now, if memory serves (and it is a rusty memory), Norton's "Reputation" engine, probably like other desktop security software, takes into account a number of factors (amongst other things) when deciding whether something is safe.
- How new is it?
- How many people in the Norton community are already using it and have "trusted" it in their application
- Whether the application is trying to reconfigure routers/firewalls to open ports
- Whether the executable is digitally signed
For some reason, as far as I can tell, while Frontier digitally sign the Launcher executable, the elitedangerous64.exe is NOT digitally signed. I cannot fathom out why not.
So this gets me wondering... Norton's user base, particularly in the "not-so-technical-middle-aged-and-like-a-deal-at-PCWorld/BestBuy-or-don't-know-how-to-uninstall-OEM-software" demographic is HUGE.
Could this be part of why (as I understand it) many ED users have had problems with connections? I know there will be many other factors, but I thought this was worth raising in case it helped in the ongoing research into connectivity issues.
If there is a solid reason for not digitally signing the 64 bit executable, so be it. I completely accept the fact that I could be wrong about this whole thing!
Please don't flame me all you flamy types! Only trying to help make this awesome game even better.
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