War Thunder beware!

[xkubr]

My son recently started playing War Thunder mmog. As a slightly paranoid IT geek I try keep the PC reasonably secure (firewall, av, peerblocker, etc.). When starting up war thunder I notices a lot of suspicious network traffic and loads of warnings in the various logs. So I just wanted to warn anyone else out there about this "game". Maybe I am being paranoid but better safe than sorry...

 

[ajv]

Thanks, what kind of warnings did you see ?

 

[xkubr]

Here is a screen cap of the peerblocker logs.

Although peerblocker and firewalls (hardware & software) do sometimes pick up some blocked requests during normal web surfing (no dodgy pron sites, HONEST), adverts, location tracking, etc. (some sites are worse than others), these seem normal. However when War Thunder starts up the logs get flooded.

 

[EXhale1N]

I know the "Launcher" makes quite a few peer-to-peer connections to distribute the updates between the clients to lesson the tension on the actual "update server".

Thanks, what kind of warnings did you see ?

I would also like to know the warning indicators.

 

[psion]

probably p2p for the updates

 

[KoKaRoT]

been playing war thunder since Feb, have not had any issues

 

[xkubr]

I would also like to know the warning indicators.

PeerBlocker blocks known IP addresses that host spyware, adware and p2p. So a bunch of those IP addresses trying to communicate with my router\pc (when war thunder is running) seems like a pretty clear warning to me.

 

[xkubr]

probably p2p for the updates

So each client acts as a peer to share the update load with other clients, the design is pretty clever. My concern is firstly; is anything else besides the update being shared, and secondly what potential security holes does this open up?