Google search for "Delta Emulator" shows malware as top result | Hacker News Reader

Google search for "Delta Emulator" shows malware as top result

google.com

25 pointssegasaturn16 comments

People complain and call censorship when Google pulls down or removes some results. People complain when Google doesn't hide or pull down some other results.

This may be the first time in a while that I defend Google, but it can't be Googles fault that people seem to want both freedom and censorship at the same time. And those same people usually have entirely different, if not totally opposite, definitions of freedom and censorship.

What's the solution? A search profile customized to every single individual based on personal preferences and a TikTok-like personality learning and profiling algorithm that would display only results that person wants to see. What a wonderful world would that be.

Google is misleading people with their advertisements and redirecting users to malicious locations. This has resulted in several hundred intrusions that led to ransomware deployment.

Google is taking a cut in organized crime and malware distribution. How this is "okay" is beyond me.

I am not calling for censorship in any way, and they certainly shouldn't redact/censor results. But, they are running a criminal operation with the displayed advertisements and lying about the location. The average users (especially elderly) are being harmed by Google advertisements.

I actually don't think Google should "remove" results, including malicious or spam links. I only think that Google (a 2 trillion dollar company) should have the resources and capability to not show spam/malware as the top result for a popular two word query. The link would be fine in the middle or bottom of the page even. But the top result is a very important area and people assume (even if its wrong to) that the top result is safe, because it's from Google and they should have the resources and engineering effort to not surface obvious malware to the top.

Incompetent censorship is the worst of both worlds. Filtering out unambiguous spam and low quality algorithmic content and viruses, I don't think that's been a generally controversial idea. Some people may think they want Google to index everything, but it's like saying there should be zero law enforcement, it's transparently impractical.

I'd rather Google simply index the content without using AI to funnel us all into our personal content bubbles. (While using the same data to profile us for countless avenues of profit.)

Just posting this as FYI as Delta over the last week has been the #1 Entertainment app on the App Store, so its a very high in-demand app. also to publicly shame Google for their horrendous search result quality.

Interesting. Which one is malware? The top two results have different URLs.

* deltaemulator

* deltaemulatorapp

I'm assuming it's the second?

The App Store listing links to deltaemulator, so -app is the fake one.

Many such cases. Google is responsible for a wide variety of what security researchers refer to as "malvertising."

This often leads to intrusions/breaches. The initial payload drops, the actor deploys a C2 framework (often Cobalt Strike), pivots laterally, then drops ransomware binaries for encryption. If I had to put a number on the amount of intrusions caused by Google PPC ads, it would be an upwards of 500.

This has been a growing problem since last November, and Google is effectively taking its cut from malware distributors and aiding/abetting organized crime.

To be fair, the official site ( https://faq.deltaemulator.com/ ) always just mentions "Delta", not "Delta Emulator", so it's probably not too hard to get ahead.

But as I mentioned yesterday [1], surprising low quality results usually show Google Ads, while the more appropriate site does not. This is yet another occurrence.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40199312

The other day I was configurating my Fire TV and downloaded a fake app from the Play Store that was top result.

First thing it did was to ask me for a premium subscription to be able use the remote!. I can see elderly people get easily scammed by this, I almost was.

> Delta Emulator on iPhone FREE - Official Download (Now)

You don't need to be a security expert to see that the title is phishy.

As a caveman who only knows Delta Air Lines, Delta Electronics, and Delta Faucet for prominent entities named "Delta", who or what is "Delta" in the context of a Delta emulator?

It's an emulator for a lot of classic Nintendo games (from the NES to N64 and GB to DS) on iOS. Since the App Store now permits (non-JIT) emulation, Delta was published on the App Store. This app has been in development for the better half of a decade as something you could install after jailbreaking your device, but with the recent policy changes, it's now there for everyone to use.

It’s especially brilliant for Nintendo DS, since that works best with a touchscreen and the vertical layout of the screens fits great on an iPhone.

Getting it instantly increased my time gaming on my phone from ~0 minutes per week to four or five hours per week. And the games I’m playing are a ton better.

I’d buy more iPhone games but 1) there’s a very limited set of good ones and 2) they vanish too often, I’m not paying $20 to rent a game for 2 years when I might not even get to it until after that (life happens).

More advantages over App Store games: it’s easier on battery life than most native games(!), fits dozens of games in the space of one native game (and that’s the DS, not the smallest-cart system it emulates), and provides a common and IME very-reliable suspend-resume interface across all games. I can be back where I was in some fairly-complex game faster than I can get back to where I was in Angry Birds, say, which matters a lot on mobile, I don’t hesitate to close it at a moment’s notice.

… and that’s all aside from the, ah, price advantage (though to be fair I do own some of the carts I’m playing on it)

Many thanks, that context was sorely needed. "Delta" by itself was hardly descriptive, let alone if the subject matter describes what isn't about this so-called Delta.

Tell HN:

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