itch.io

So, first of all, let me say that you absolutely should be careful online and should NOT open or execute files which you do not trust.

So if you don’t feel safe using Bosca Ceoil Blue, do not use it! That’s the only right approach to digital security.

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Now, if you still want to use it, but are alerted by your AV freaking out about it, there are a couple of options which might help you.

• If you are trying to use the 32-bit version, please choose the 64-bit version instead (choose the file ending in windows-x86_64.zip). There is likely no reason for you to use the 32-bit version of any app in 2025.
• You can also download Bosca Ceoil Blue using Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3570850/. Perhaps having Valve as an intermediary would give you confidence. They do manually test every project that is published on Steam (at least initially).
• You can also use Bosca Ceoil Blue online with your browser: https://humnom.net/apps/boscaceoil/. This way, nothing gets downloaded on your PC, except for the music that you make and eventually export.

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If you’re wondering why your antivirus is freaking out, let me try to explain it as simple as possible.

There are many ways to detect wrongful activity on your PC. One of the most basic ones is scanning every file to try and spot a virus hidden within. As you might know, files are made up from bytes. Like our DNA, bytes form chains, sequences which together create a unique file on your hard drive.

These chains of bytes are not themselves unique. Anyone can have brown eyes or blonde hair. These are traits that may repeat from person to person, and so chains of bytes may repeat from file to file. Despite that, chains of bytes is exactly what an antivirus is looking for when scanning your files for viruses.

Now, you might think, an antivirus should just know all chains of bytes that make up a known virus, but that’s not a very good defense. If you only identify a virus by how it looks like now, the hacker who created it could just disguise the virus in a different form. Like using differently colored contact lenses or wearing a wig. So antivirus makers try to find a trait, a chain of bytes that would be sufficiently unique for the virus.

That is called fingerprinting. And the process of trying to match a file using multiple fingerprints is called a heuristic approach.

Like everything in security, there is balance to things. Looking for traits allows to identify bad software even as it tries to elude the antivirus. But it also means that inevitably someone will match the description even though they have no relation to the virus. This is called getting a false positive: the matching was successful, but there is no virus actually, just a coincidence.

Digital security is crucial, so your antivirus is designed to be extremely paranoid. It will happily report a false positive match like that just to be sure. Better to be safe than sorry. Which is how sometimes legitimate and innocent files can be marked as viruses or trojans. They just have same brown eyes and same blonde hair as the description that the antivirus is looking for.

Hope this makes sense :) But again, if you don’t feel safe using the app, do not use it. That’s the right thing to do.