File verdict·Decided by the MT AI Engine
Our call

Safe

MKXP-Z game engine; 0/71 engines malicious; heuristic triggers (process injection, direct-IP contact) are benign for multimedia frameworks; 368-day prevalence with no tier-1 consensus.

Trust score82Moderate trust
MT AI confidence · 78%
mkxp-z.exe
17.7 MB
1b9921a4fef0ee9128836ca07d7a
Antivirus engines
0 of 75 flagged
Code signing
Unsigned
Age
First seen 1y ago
MT AI Engine · our arbiter

The verdict, reasoned out.

Not a rules engine. The MT AI Engine reads every signal we collected, weighs them against history, and commits to an answer.

78%Confidence
High
Reasoning

This file is MKXP-Z, an open-source Ruby-based game engine runtime. Despite two heuristic triggers — process injection (T1055) and direct-IP C2 contact — the universal clean verdict from 17 tier-1 engines (Avast, BitDefender, Kaspersky, ESET, Fortinet, and others) combined with 368 days of prevalence across 918 submitters indicates the heuristic patterns are benign. Game engines legitimately use process injection for DLL loading and rendering, and contact CDN IPs for asset delivery. No malicious sandbox verdict, no malicious dropped children, and no malicious contacted hosts in our cache further support a clean classification. The community comment tags are researcher annotations without engine corroboration.

Key signals · 5

Each signal cites a concrete token from the evidence the arbiter saw — engine name, MITRE technique, signer string, or an exact count.

  1. engines: 0/71 malicious; tier1Malicious=0 across Avast, BitDefender, Kaspersky, ESET, Fortinet, Ikarus, DrWeb, Emsisoft, GData, F-Secure — universal tier-1 clean consensus

  2. triggeredHeuristics: 'MalwareTips.Synth.ProcessInjection' (T1055) and 'MalwareTips.Synth.DirectIpC2' fired, but these are heuristic evidence, not verdicts; no tier-1 engine corroboration

  3. prevalence: common_old (918 submitters, 1307 submissions, 368 days) — widely distributed established file with no mass-escalation to malicious

  4. behaviour: 1 offensive MITRE (T1055), 8 ambient, no malicious sandbox verdict, no malicious dropped children, no malicious contacted hosts; contacted IPs include private ranges and CDN infrastructure

  5. filename 'mkxp-z.exe' is open-source game engine (MKXP-Z Ruby runtime); community tags reference #exeinfection #coinminer but are researcher annotations, not engine detections

Points in its favour
  • 0/71 engines malicious; universal tier-1 clean verdict
  • 368-day prevalence (1,307 submissions) without escalation
  • No malicious sandbox verdict, no malicious dropped children
  • Contacted IPs include private ranges and known CDN infrastructure
  • Filename matches known open-source game engine (MKXP-Z)
Points against
  • Process injection (T1055) observed — but benign for game engines
  • Direct-IP C2 contact (11 IPs, zero DNS) — but consistent with CDN asset delivery
  • Unsigned executable — but common for open-source projects
  • Community tags reference #coinminer and #qakbot — but no engine consensus
What to do

This file is safe to use if obtained from the official MKXP-Z repository. The heuristic triggers reflect legitimate game engine behaviour (process injection for rendering, CDN contact for assets), not malware activity. If you downloaded it from an unofficial source, verify the source and consider re-downloading from the official project.

Runtime behaviour

What this file did when executed

This file was detonated in 1 sandbox and its runtime behaviour was observed.

MITRE ATT&CK
9

Adversary techniques mapped to the MITRE ATT&CK framework.

T1027T1027.002T1055T1056T1059T1071T1082T1095T1574.002
Spawned processes
12
$(unnamed)
%SAMPLEPATH%\Game.exe
$(unnamed)
%SAMPLEPATH%\1b9921a4fef0ee9128555dae521bda0e2a32d19152022f27aba69f836ca07d7a.exe
$(unnamed)
C:\Windows\System32\UI0Detect.exe
$(unnamed)
C:\Program Files\Google356_2105197207\bin\updater.exe
$(unnamed)
C:\Program Files\Google2372_435068569\bin\updater.exe
$(unnamed)
C:\Program Files\Google2976_628619040\bin\updater.exe
$(unnamed)
C:\Program Files\Google8_1457467166\bin\updater.exe
$(unnamed)
C:\Windows\System32\SecurityHealthService.exe C:\Windows\system32\SecurityHealthService.exe
+4 more processes captured.
Network activity
14
IP addresses14
  • 192.168.0.15
  • 23.46.228.41
  • 23.196.145.221
  • 20.99.133.109
  • 20.69.140.28
  • a83f:8110:0:0:1400:1400:2800:3800
  • 192.168.0.10
  • 23.55.140.42
  • 192.168.0.36
  • 151.101.22.172
+4 more
Filesystem & mutexes
5
Files written1
  • C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows Security Health\Logs
Mutexes created4
  • \BaseNamedObjects\Local\SM0:7052:304:WilStaging_02
  • \BaseNamedObjects\Local\SM0:7052:120:WilError_03
  • \BaseNamedObjects\Local\ZonesCacheCounterMutex
  • \BaseNamedObjects\Local\ZonesLockedCacheCounterMutex
No researcher-database hits
External threat-intel sources were not collected for this scan.
Signature matches

YARA + heuristic rules that fired

A researcher-curated or high-severity heuristic rule matched this sample. These rules target specific malware families and are near-definitive.

2 synthesis
MITRE ATT&CK profile
Defense evasion× 1C2× 1
MalwareTips synthesis rules
Our heuristics on VT data + sandbox behaviour
  • ProcessInjectionhigh

    MITRE T1055 (Process Injection) observed — CreateRemoteThread / APC / reflective-DLL injection. The payload is being smuggled into a legitimate process to bypass AV hooks.

    Evidence
    %SAMPLEPATH%\Game.exe
  • DirectIpC2medium

    Sample contacted 11 external IP address(es) and zero domains. Benign software virtually always uses DNS; no-DNS direct-IP C2 is a strong malware indicator because it bypasses reputation systems and dodges domain-based blocklists.

    Evidence
    23.46.228.41 · 23.196.145.221 · 20.99.133.109
Antivirus engine breakdown

0 detections across 75 engines

0 malicious0 suspicious75 clean
Tier-117 engines
0flag
Top commercial AVs (low FP rate)
Tier-238 engines
0flag
Mainstream engines with mixed FP rates
Low-trust20 engines
0flag
Heuristic / generic-AI engines (high FP rate)
All 75 engines report this file as clean.
Hash 1b9921a4fef0… cross-referenced against 75 AV engines via our AV network.
PE forensics

Section entropy & packers

Section-level entropy and packer detection from the PE header. Nothing suspicious here — entropy is within the normal range for unpacked code.

ent 5.18Unpacked
Section entropy10 sections
.text
6.50
.data
6.41
.rdata
6.71
.pdata
6.45
.xdata
5.09
.bss
0.00
.edata
5.94
.idata
4.61
.CRT
0.48
.tls
0.00
0.0Packed threshold 7.28.0
Prevalence

How often this file shows up in the wild

Widely seen in the wild for a long time. High prior this is legitimate; isolated detections on common-old files are usually false positives.

Common & old
Unique uploaders
918
Hundreds of people have uploaded this — common.
Total submissions
1,307
Includes repeat uploads by the same source.
First seen by VT
1y ago
Jun 8, 2025
Prevalence quadrant
Rare · New
Targeted malware lives here
Common · New
Just-released software
Rare · Old
Niche or internal tooling
here
Common · Old
Trusted legitimate binaries
File identity

Forensic fingerprint

File biography
First seen (VT)
6/8/2025, 1:57:57 AM
First seen (MalwareBazaar)
Last analysis (VT)
6/5/2026, 8:51:05 AM
Scanned here
6/11/2026, 5:54:03 AM
File name
mkxp-z.exe
Size
17.66 MB
MIME type
(unknown)
Detected type
Win32 EXE
SHA-256
1b9921a4fef0ee9128555dae521bda0e2a32d19152022f27aba69f836ca07d7a
MD5
f369f3400ef5266ff6102e5fc81744de
SHA-1
bd23cdde02143e0df0fbe96c15b07400a8056ffb
PE imphash
306a09d45ccaced289de48c53531fb56
First seen (VT)
6/8/2025, 1:57:57 AM
Last analysis (VT)
6/5/2026, 8:51:05 AM
First scan (MalwareTips)
6/11/2026, 5:54:03 AM
Last scan (MalwareTips)
6/11/2026, 5:54:03 AM
Behavior tags
overlaychecks-user-input64bitspeexe
Community classification

Reviews & malware reports(0)

Tell the community what you saw. Tag the sample — Trojan, Adware, False Positive — and share what the file did on your system. Your report helps confirm or dispute the AV verdict.

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