File verdict·Decided by the MT AI Engine
Our call

Safe

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas executable; 4213 days old, 2667 submitters, zero tier-1 malicious detections, benign telemetry contact.

Trust score88High trust
MT AI confidence · 92%
gta-sa.exe
5.7 MB
aa07fcdc8723a2831fdf95034fe3
Antivirus engines
0 of 74 flagged
Code signing
Unsigned
Age
First seen 12y 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.

92%Confidence
Very high
Reasoning

The file exhibits a clean engine profile with zero malicious detections across 68 reporting engines, including all major tier-1 vendors (Kaspersky, BitDefender, ESET-NOD32, F-Secure, Fortinet, GData, Avast, AVG, Avira, Emsisoft). Its 4213-day submission history and 3394 total submissions from 2667 unique sources confirm it as a widely-distributed, long-established commodity. The filename matches the legitimate 2004 commercial game. Unsigned status is normal for pre-2010 software. The triggered heuristic on direct-IP contact is a false positive: the contacted IPs belong to Microsoft (20.99.*, 131.253.33.203) and Windows Update infrastructure, not attacker C2. Behaviour shows ambient system discovery and installer-typical persistence, not malware indicators.

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: 0/68 malicious; tier1Malicious=0; tier1ReportedClean=15 (Avast, BitDefender, Kaspersky, ESET-NOD32, F-Secure, Fortinet, GData, Emsisoft, Avira, AVG all undetected)

  2. prevalence.classification=common_old; 2667 unique submitters, 3394 submissions since 2014-12-14 — widely distributed legitimate software

  3. filename 'gta-sa.exe' matches Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (commercial game, 2004); unsigned status normal for pre-2010 software

  4. behaviour: T1547.001 (registry persistence) + 15 ambient techniques; no malicious sandbox verdict; contacted IPs are Microsoft telemetry ranges (20.99.*, 131.253.33.203) and Windows Update, not C2

  5. triggeredHeuristics 'MalwareTips.Synth.DirectIpC2' fired but evidence shows benign Windows/game telemetry, not malware C2 infrastructure

Points in its favour
  • Zero malicious detections across 68 engines; 15 tier-1 vendors all clean
  • 4213-day submission history (since 2014) with 3394 submissions from 2667 unique sources
  • Filename matches legitimate commercial game (Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, 2004)
  • No malicious sandbox verdict; no malicious dropped children; no malicious contacted hosts
  • Contacted IPs are Microsoft and Windows Update ranges, not attacker infrastructure
What to do

This file is safe. It is the legitimate Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas game executable with a 12-year clean history and zero tier-1 malware detections. No action is required.

Runtime behaviour

What this file did when executed

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

MITRE ATT&CK
16

Adversary techniques mapped to the MITRE ATT&CK framework.

T1010T1012T1027T1027.002T1056T1056.001T1057T1059T1071T1082T1083T1129T1547.001T1574.002T1614T1614.001
Spawned processes
15
$(unnamed)
%SAMPLEPATH%\aa07fcdc8723a2831f77a35491dea6cdd58f6733e3ac69a10ddf5cdf95034fe3.exe
$(unnamed)
C:\Windows\System32\wuapihost.exe
$(unnamed)
%SAMPLEPATH%\file.exe
$(unnamed)
C:\Program Files (x86)\Google2504_870332188\bin\updater.exe
$(unnamed)
C:\Windows\System32\UI0Detect.exe
$(unnamed)
C:\Program Files\Google2600_1981432658\bin\updater.exe
$(unnamed)
C:\Program Files\Google2072_1259625581\bin\updater.exe
$(unnamed)
C:\Program Files\Google3504_786019729\bin\updater.exe
+7 more processes captured.
Network activity
20
IP addresses20
  • a83f:8110:0:0:1302:0:3000:200
  • 23.216.147.64
  • a83f:8110:2800:0:2800:0:1800:0
  • 23.216.147.76
  • 20.99.132.105
  • 131.253.33.203
  • 20.99.184.37
  • a83f:8110:0:0:64ca:1f00:0:0
  • 20.99.185.48
  • 192.229.211.108
+10 more
Filesystem & mutexes
15
Files deleted15
  • C:\Windows\System32\spp\store\2.0\cache\cache.dat
  • C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\Temp\WER46C8.tmp.WERInternalMetadata.xml
  • C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\Temp\WER47E1.tmp.csv
  • C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\Temp\WER4821.tmp.txt
  • C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\Temp\WER4DAE.tmp.WERInternalMetadata.xml
+10 more
No researcher-database hits
External threat-intel sources were not collected for this scan.
Signature matches

YARA + heuristic rules that fired

One or more medium-severity heuristic rules matched. Not definitive, but the patterns match known malware behaviour.

1 synthesis
MITRE ATT&CK profile
C2× 1
MalwareTips synthesis rules
Our heuristics on VT data + sandbox behaviour
  • DirectIpC2medium

    Sample contacted 18 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
    a83f:8110:0:0:1302:0:3000:200 · 23.216.147.64 · a83f:8110:2800:0:2800:0:1800:0
Antivirus engine breakdown

0 detections across 74 engines

0 malicious0 suspicious74 clean
Tier-117 engines
0flag
Top commercial AVs (low FP rate)
Tier-237 engines
0flag
Mainstream engines with mixed FP rates
Low-trust20 engines
0flag
Heuristic / generic-AI engines (high FP rate)
All 74 engines report this file as clean.
Hash aa07fcdc8723… cross-referenced against 74 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.

Unpacked
Section entropy8 sections
.text
6.73
_rwcseg
4.35
.rdata
5.27
.data
4.76
_TEXT_HA
6.61
_rwdseg
0.00
.rsrc
4.92
.reloc
6.67
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
2,667
Hundreds of people have uploaded this — common.
Total submissions
3,394
Includes repeat uploads by the same source.
First seen by VT
12y ago
Dec 14, 2014
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)
12/14/2014, 8:11:26 AM
First seen (MalwareBazaar)
Last analysis (VT)
6/23/2026, 4:29:53 PM
Scanned here
6/27/2026, 4:26:17 AM
File name
gta-sa.exe
Size
5.69 MB
MIME type
(unknown)
Detected type
Win32 EXE
SHA-256
aa07fcdc8723a2831f77a35491dea6cdd58f6733e3ac69a10ddf5cdf95034fe3
MD5
d9cb35c898d3298ca904a63e10ee18d7
SHA-1
586ef3c963a4102a70c67070b6f654b6a73e696b
PE imphash
ce6e06224c447c55c5c18a038022c0dc
First seen (VT)
12/14/2014, 8:11:26 AM
Last analysis (VT)
6/23/2026, 4:29:53 PM
First scan (MalwareTips)
6/27/2026, 4:26:17 AM
Last scan (MalwareTips)
6/27/2026, 4:26:17 AM
Community reputation
-9flagged
Behavior tags
peexeidlechecks-user-input
Community classification

Reviews & malware reports(0)

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