How to tell if a commercial program is malicious?

Question

Could anyone tell me if there's a way I can trust an application I'm running on my computer. Like a video game, for example, or the launcher of that video game.

How can I know if, Counter-Strike for example, did or is doing anything malicious?

I understand that some big video game titles might be safer for how many people experiment with them and for other reasons, like them not wanting to risk the huge commerce value they have by breaching user's privacy. I'm trying to know how are they practically trusted and if there's any way those apps' activities are seen and examined fully or if there's a chance something is not being detected.

A big video game title can have the guise of commerce, but be for the same reason the best method to spy on people in big numbers.

I'm worried of things like, for malicious intents, stealing login credentials for other unrelated services that I use, seeing my PC's name or username, my network's name, my emails, my social media accounts, my documents, my pictures and files in general, getting access to microphones or webcams, using my PC as a proxy for anything malicious, setting up remote access, or anything very malicious that I might have not thought about.

Some of those breaches is not a big deal, but some are really things I don't want to risk.

I remember reading somewhere that there's no way at all of knowing what an exe does on a computer. How true is that?

Is there any easy safety measures I can take? Do popular games like those get examined thoroughly by experts? I want to trust those apps. How can I do so?

I wonder if anything malicious caused by something like I mentioned happens, then could it cause the computer to be forever ridden with whatever it caused? Or is that too difficult for an application to cause?

If such apps were examined by the best experts, then how likely is it that something goes undetected?

How can I look for suspicious activity of an app? Can I analyze the thing myself? How reliable can a beginner's analysis (mine) be? Or does it rely more on the tools used?

Answer 1

I remember reading somewhere that there's no way at all of knowing what an exe does on a computer. How true is that?

As much I wish there was a magic .exe problem-finder program, there isn't. If you really are worried about what an .exe file will do to your computer, run it in a VM (though VMs aren't completely safe) or on a computer or laptop you don't care about.

Is there any easy safety measures I can take? Do popular games like those get examined thoroughly by experts? I want to trust those apps. How can I do so?

I would like to pose another question to answer this one. Let's purpose that Blizzard's World of Warcraft had a piece of malware in it that stole the credentials from it's users, just their username and password for their laptop or computer. What would Blizzard do with that information? Would they sell it to malicious people? Keep it to hack into people's bank accounts? No big company, in my humble opinion, would do something like that. It just doesn't make a whole lot of sense for them. Even if they didn't do anything with that information, and rather just sat on it, there would be an outcry from consumers if they ever found out about the malware. Not to mention, all the legal problems they would have would be tremendous.

I wonder if anything malicious caused by something like I mentioned happens, then could it cause the computer to be forever ridden with whatever it caused? Or is that too difficult for an application to cause?

Malware comes in all shapes and sizes, of different intensities and methods. Sometimes all you need is your Windows Defender to kick in and clean up whatever virus you have. Sometimes you get something like a rootkit, which is stored so deep in your computer that the only way to really get rid of it is the nuke it from orbit. This question is really to broad to answer.

If such apps were examined by the best experts, then how likely is it that something goes undetected?

No one is perfect, though if it's examined by "experts(?)", you can probably bet there isn't anything malicious going on. Of course, it always happens that every once and a while something might be missed, but I would say that if someone well versed in security looked at a program and deemed it OK, there is probably a 99% chance that it's going to be just fine.

How can I look for suspicious activity of an app? Can I analyze the thing myself? How reliable can a beginner's analysis (mine) be? Or does it rely more on the tools used?

Sometimes malware is so sneaky that even people that know what they're doing can't find it. That being said, if you notice that your internet is particularly slow as of late, or ads are popping up on your desktop, you'll probably realize something is wrong. But again, big programs or games like these most likely won't have anything suspicious going on.