CrashMods is built around one promise: you should be able to see whether a mod file is safe before you download it — and you should be able to check that claim yourself, not just take our word for it.
Every file uploaded here is downloaded to our own server, fingerprinted, and submitted to VirusTotal, which runs it through the commercial antivirus engines of Microsoft, Kaspersky, Bitdefender, ESET, Avast, CrowdStrike, Sophos, Fortinet and dozens more. The verdict is printed on the mod page as a plain-language badge, with a link to the full report.
The numbers, as of today
Of every mod scanned so far, 5,972 came back clean from every single engine. A few files have been flagged by a small number of engines and are marked accordingly. None has ever been flagged by a large number of engines — and if one ever is, you will see it on the page rather than not see the mod at all.
How a file gets from upload to download
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The file is fetched, not trusted
We download the actual file our visitors would get — not a description of it. If the creator hosts it externally, we follow the same link you would.
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It gets a fingerprint
We compute a SHA-256 hash. That hash identifies the exact bytes, so a file cannot be quietly swapped after it passes.
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Dozens of engines look at it
VirusTotal runs the file through every participating antivirus engine at once. Our largest scan so far used 77 engines.
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The verdict is published as-is
We do not filter or soften the result. If engines disagree, the badge says so and links to the full breakdown.
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Only then does the mod go live
A submission stays in the queue until the scan returns. Nothing skips the gate.
What each badge means
Every engine that scanned the file found it clean. This is the result on the large majority of mods here.
Nearly every engine found no threat, with one or two flagging it. This is common and usually a false positive — script mods and self-extracting archives are frequently mis-flagged by heuristic scanners. The full report shows exactly which engine objected.
A meaningful number of engines flagged the file. We show this honestly instead of hiding the mod, and we recommend reading the full report before you decide.
The file is larger than our automatic scan limit, so it was not auto-scanned. Large files are normal for maps and total-conversion mods.
Check it yourself
Every scanned mod links to its full VirusTotal report. You can see each engine by name and what it returned, the file’s hash, its size, when it was first submitted, and what is inside the archive. Nothing on that page comes from us — it is VirusTotal’s own record, and it stays reachable whether or not you ever visit CrashMods again.
Why the hash matters. The report is keyed to the file’s SHA-256 fingerprint. If you download the mod and compute the hash yourself, you can confirm you received the exact file that was scanned — byte for byte.
A real scan record
This is an actual scan from this library — not an illustration. The Mercedes-Benz ML63 AMG mod for Assetto Corsa, scanned on 17 August 2026. Every value below comes straight from the report, and the link goes to VirusTotal’s own page for the file.
engines flagged it
No security vendor flagged this file as malicious.
- File
- mercedes_w164_ml63.zip
- Type
- ZIP archive · 125 files inside
- Size
- 138.58 MB (145,308,649 bytes)
- SHA-256
- 0a1c093b1bf3743b1da695ec0766f7dadc99251dc81fca32733b9dd7e2415d21
- Scanned
- 17 August 2026 · 73 engines participated, 63 returned a verdict
Ten of the 73 engines returned type-unsupported rather than a verdict — normal for a large ZIP archive, since some engines only inspect executables. Sixty-three engines analysed the contents and none objected.
And when a scan does flag something
The example above is the normal case. This one is the exception — a real file from this library that engines did flag, and what happened to it. We are showing it because a security promise you only ever see confirmed is worth very little.
engines flagged it
7 security vendors flagged this file as malicious.
- File
- carpet-pvp-1.21.5-1.4.0+v260116.jar
- Type
- Java archive (.jar) · Minecraft mod
- Size
- 1.51 MB (1,580,313 bytes)
- SHA-256
- 080eb2ede8287298865e015022aa14b00f967e7434817b9b41e340903afb8189
- Scanned
- 27 July 2026 · 7 flagged, 56 clean, 8 could not read the format
- Result on CrashMods
- Held back — not published. Marked “Flagged — staff review”.
Read the report and the picture is more nuanced than the number suggests: five of the seven returned the identical signature name, which is what happens when several products are built on the same underlying engine — so this is closer to two independent opinions than to seven. The other 56 engines found nothing.
So is it a virus? We do not know — and that is the point. A detection count is evidence, not a verdict. Java mod files trip heuristics easily, because the very things a mod legitimately does — renaming its own process, reading the CPU, noticing a debugger — look like evasion to a scanner. Seven out of sixty-three is exactly the grey zone where an automatic decision would be wrong in both directions: publishing it anyway would break our promise, and deleting it on sight would punish a creator over a probable false positive.
So the file sits in the middle state you see above. It is not in the public library, nobody can download it from here, and a person looks at it. If it turns out to be clean it goes live with its real scan record attached; if not, it never appears at all. What we will not do is quietly publish it and hope.
What we check beyond viruses
A clean scan is necessary but not sufficient. Before a mod appears in the library:
- A human reads it. Every submission goes through moderation — the description, the images and the download link are reviewed, not just the file.
- The download link is tested. We check that the link resolves to a real file of the expected size. If a link later breaks, our system flags it and we fix or remove it.
- The screenshots are processed. Images are watermarked and re-encoded before publication, which also strips anything unexpected embedded in them.
- The file size is verified from the file itself — read from the actual download, not typed in by hand.
Honest limits
No automated scan can guarantee a file is 100% safe, and we will not claim otherwise. A few things worth knowing:
- A scan reflects the file at the time it was scanned. That is why the badge shows the scan date.
- Antivirus engines produce false positives, especially on mod archives and script mods. One flag out of seventy is far more likely to be a heuristic than a threat.
- Some files are hosted on external services chosen by their creators. Where that is the case, the file you receive is the creator’s file, delivered by their host.
- We are a small team. We move quickly on reports, but we are not a security laboratory.
Sensible precautions still apply: keep your own antivirus active, back up your saves before installing anything large, and add new mods one at a time so you can tell which one caused a problem.
Found something wrong? Tell us.
If a download link is broken, a file looks unsafe, or you believe a mod infringes someone’s rights — including your own work published here without credit — please get in touch or use the report option on the mod page. We act on reports quickly, and that feedback loop is a real part of how this library stays trustworthy.
