Is Downloading from 2FastRacing safe?

There are also many website that collect research papers and use a paywall to cash in on fellow researchers, without paying any of their income to original author. Bypassing the paywall is difficult if not impossible. Better to contact the author themselves to acquire that said paper, or share with those already acquired.

 

they're on a speedrun to become shittier than ppl who dont think BLM should be a thing

 

I agree with you but there's no reason to shoehorn politics into every conversation

inb4 giant argument

 

Why is this even a discussion?
No, 2fast has been banned from the official discord for mod theft... if a site is banned, you probably should not download from it period.
I'm just gunna copy the blurb I tell everyone on reddit and the discord when it comes to third party sites:

Please never download from external third party sites! the mod quality tends to be bad, sites have been found to steal and leak mods which kills motivation for mod developers, and they can lead to viruses! A beamNG mod is basically the same as an exe, if you wouldn't run a exe from there don't download a mod!

 

Stop saying lies. A mod has nothing to do with an exe, you need to execute a virus to catch it. If a mod zip have no exe in it, then it's safe to use. Please stop assuming all third-pairy mods have exes

 

I have done a ton of research into lua and beamng, I even leaked PBR/Vulkan before the update. I know how lua works, I know what is possible because I have done it. Lua can execute system commands, the game is sandboxed to prevent this but figuring out sandbox escapes is basically hacking 101. So it is 100% possible to have a mod execute system commands, or download and run exe files. The entire point of lua is to be able to do that stuff, beamng just uses security to try and trim it out.

 

100%? Stop fear mongering. I never heard of any game mod successively download and execute a non-existent exe

 

Just because its not been done and shown off and done publicly doesn't mean its not possible... or has not been one before in private testing

 

Still not 100%, may be 0.01%

 

Oh hun, I dont think you understand hacking then. Everything can be hacked to do anything, and when you give the user basically raw lua and only snip out the obviously bad parts? That becomes not an if, but a when it happens with a public mod.

 

Oh, so you can hack into your neighbor's computer offline using electricity cables instead of internet connection

 

Thats just... off topic now. I didnt say you could do it with anything lmao. If you had physical access to an air-gapped computer though that would lead to very easy compromise, but yeah off topic to this. Im just saying, its LuaJIT with some parts snipped out, so if you were able to find a way around the protection then you can literally run shell commands freely and write ANY kind of file you wanted.

 

Even if someone didn't figure out how to do major damage, you could still download a mod that ex. calls into the games mod manager and uninstalls all your mods, and things like that. You're right, you need to execute code for it to work, and well, that's what plenty of mods (like most of mine) do already, just not in a malicious manner.

 

OK I get it. Calls into the games mod manager, changes the BeamNG user folder into the OS's folders, deletes all your "mods", which in turn does major damage to your OS. Easier said than done.

OK I understand. Thus, for extra layer of protection, manually check the lua files in the mod zip to find any possible malicious codes.
Note: I'm not arguing with you, I agree that many third-party mods are poor mashslaps and use contents without permission/credits, so using these mods are not encouraged. However, the "100%" possible and "A beamNG mod is basically the same as an exe" are still exaggeration.

 

the first one wont do any major damage to the OS, beamng is sandboxed and can not access folders outside the one it is specified on boot. (Unless you have an exploit which lets you). It can just nuke all your mods and stuff.

But yes, manually check the lua files and have good experience in coding to know what looks malicious and whatnot... just like the devs do here on the repo! all repo mods here are checked before being made public, but can you trust others to have the same knowledge of malicious lua like the devs of their own game?

and 100% possible is still not an exaggeration, everything a user has access too can be hacked.

 

It's 100% possible for your food to be poisoned unless you made all ingredients and processing by your self. Is that an exaggeration?
(If this is off-topic I'll shut up)

 

That is 100% possible... 100% possible means it very much could happen, not that it will. It is 100% possible for me to crash my car on the way to work tomorrow, all it takes is 1 person not paying attention. It is 100% possible for my internet to go down, all it takes is a software hiccup. Literally that has happened to people before due to tampering so, yeah it is possible.

 

Thank you, I was just saying it is not a matter of 'is it possible' because... it is possible. We just dont know when it will happen, but someone wanted semantics. So yes, people would be surprised at the amount of access a beamng mod can get access to with an exploit.

I should clarify, a beamng mod is LIKE an exe. I know its a zip im not blind, but it can to almost everything an exe can if it jumps the sandbox. Therefore, treat it like an exe.

 

saying this is 100% possible is like saying its 100% possible for me to hack beam devs and the cia and anything.
yes everything is 100% possible of being hacked, but the actual possibility of the human doing the work is more of a 0.01%

basically nobody can do this shit cuz half of the forum users are crappy scrips kiddies who can barely make a meshslap...
so please.... stop saying you will catch some virus from a beamng mod, you have more chances to get a virus from a shitty website ads that gives you an actual exe, then some person doing a hack and lua exploit just for... what again?
stealing discord tokens or just screening over someones desktop and stuff?
this is just pathetic lol.
yeah its good informing people about this kinda stuff, but there is a limit yaknow...
when its to a point where you say its all 100% possible, well damn. so is getting rich but you dont see me bragging about how possible everything is in life.
the possibilities are endless. its the getting it done and the talent thats rarely ever there.

that being said, 2fr sucks, as for the same reason being mentioned above, theft of mods and.. welll.. 100% possible that they tried to make a mod but also 100% possible that they failed at making anything decent.