Opening the game leads to suspicious connection

aslan06 · July 14

Hi, often when I launch ESO - I get notification from bitdefender that "suspicious connection was blocked"
"msedge.exe attempted to establish a connection relying on an expired certificate to blogs dot plitch dot com."
Interestingly enough, for couple of days now I get the exact same notification whenever I launch Oblivion remaster.
I didn't test much with other games, but so far I think its just ESO and Oblivion.

Has anyone encountered this problem? Seen some people have it as well, but zero info on it.

LootAllTheStuff · July 14

Does it do it if you disable all add-ons?

Vraedlich · July 14

Uh are you using any cheats? That url's for some stuff that will get your account banned. Or is this some kind of attempt to advertise the cheat page "accidentally"? You have just posted to a website that provides cheats for games. I would recommed you edit it.

aslan06 · July 14

LootAllTheStuff wrote: »

Does it do it if you disable all add-ons?

Yes, I don’t think it’s related to it at all, again - it shows up when I launch Oblivion as well.

Vraedlich wrote: »

Uh are you using any cheats? That url's for some stuff that will get your account banned. Or is this some kind of attempt to advertise the cheat page "accidentally"? You have just posted to a website that provides cheats for games. I would recommed you edit it.

That bitdefender notification is the first time I see this site.

SeaGtGruff · July 14

I haven't seen anything like that.

Do you use any AI "assistants" on your computer that try to be "helpful" by looking up any topic or site or program it thinks is associated with whatever you happen to be doing on the computer?

Because if you truly have never heard of that cheat software, the only thing I can think of is that maybe an AI assistant found some kind of "hot topic" where people who bought Oblivion Remastered have posted about that cheat program, and the AI is expanding that to include anything with "elder scrolls" in the title, then trying to open your browser and navigate to that site.

I don't even know if that makes sense, because I disable all AI assistants and "autopilots" on my computers, and don't really know what they're capable of.

aslan06 · July 15

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

I haven't seen anything like that.

Do you use any AI "assistants" on your computer that try to be "helpful" by looking up any topic or site or program it thinks is associated with whatever you happen to be doing on the computer?

Because if you truly have never heard of that cheat software, the only thing I can think of is that maybe an AI assistant found some kind of "hot topic" where people who bought Oblivion Remastered have posted about that cheat program, and the AI is expanding that to include anything with "elder scrolls" in the title, then trying to open your browser and navigate to that site.

I don't even know if that makes sense, because I disable all AI assistants and "autopilots" on my computers, and don't really know what they're capable of.

No, unless it’s some Microsoft bloatware.
Only thing I noticed is whenever I launch any game, in task manager- game assist with Microsoft edge shows up (I tried to turn it off, but it always goes back on). Especially since I use chrome, not edge (as you notice on pic, it’s msedge trying to connect).
I had this suspicious connection show up only for Oblivion remaster for the last 3 days, and today it started showing up for ESO as well, so I was just wondering if it’s some mess up on zenimax or Microsoft side or both, or something malicious.

SilverBride · July 15

I looked this up and found something saying that the most likely culprit is an Edge extension attempting to access that web site. It recommended to disable all Edge extensions to see if the issue resolves.

aslan06 · July 15

SilverBride wrote: »

I looked this up and found something saying that the most likely culprit is an Edge extension attempting to access that web site. It recommended to disable all Edge extensions to see if the issue resolves.

I don’t use edge and have no extensions on it, just checked.
I will try getting rid of game assist from Microsoft, and see how it goes.

aslan06 · July 15

Alright, so… going to settings > apps > installed apps and uninstalling game assist fixed the issue for now. But apparently game assist can reinstall it self when Microsoft edge updates.

The biggest issue here is - why does Microsoft official app tries to connect you to a hacking website with no certificate.

SeaGtGruff · July 15

It may be that you can modify the permissions for Game Assist without actually disabling or uninstalling it, but I'd have to look at the available settings. I do know that I don't want Copilot or any other AI "assistants" monitoring my activities and making "helpful" suggestions, so I uninstalled Copilot and turned off any other AI-related app settings that sound like they have to do with giving programs permission to offer suggestions, or anything like that.

As far as why Game Assist was trying to pull up something from a questionable website, it probably detected that you've got Oblivion Remastered, so it started looking for web pages that mention Oblivion Remastered, and it happened to find a blog posting about Oblivion Remastered on that website, so it was trying to show it to you in case it was something you might be interested in reading.

aslan06 · July 15

I don’t need that game assist though. It was more of an annoyance than help.
And now that Microsoft doesn’t even check what it tries to connect you to - definitely don’t need that.