NOD32 causes Tobii eye-tracking to have High CPU Usage

[Super_Spartan 56]

I have an Alienware laptop which has an Eye interaction device built in called Tobii. Today I was just browsing the web when I suddenly started hearing the fans spin up and they kept spinning at high speed so I thought something was fishy. I opened task manager and noticed a process called Tobii.EyeX.Engine.exe having constant 20% usage when normally it would just be 1.3 to 2% usage only.

I then Googled this and got a result from Reddit forums of other users having the same issue, they were not using NOD32, some were using BitDefender, others Kaspersky, etc.

So I added Tobii.EyeX.Engine.exe to the Performance Exclusions and rebooted. Now the CPU Usage is fine and Tobii is back to only using 1-2%

I don't know how to report this to ESET as it's not exactly a false positive since it's not detected as a virus or PUP or anything of that nature, perhaps ESET can whitelist that process or I dunno what they can do about this to solve this issue which may affect thousands of Alienware users and they might not even realise it.

Virus Total Report = https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/2ec7e4761a9e52773ced6a08195a599650438b441f409426ea8a5718dcfe804f/detection

File Location: C:\Program Files (x86)\Tobii\Tobii EyeXTobii.EyeX.Engine.exe

SHA1 = 22e1f041c3ed069b0369dd18958afbd0aa70c921

MD5 = c9f41b3e6bb6441371d4a8857498c73d

Edited June 20, 2020 by Super_Spartan

[itman 1,659]

Do you have Eset Gamer mode enabled in Computer protection section?

Another possibility is Eset Webcam protection in the same section. Eset might be somehow treating this eye interaction device as a webcam.

[Super_Spartan 56]

7 hours ago, itman said:

Do you have Eset Gamer mode enabled in Computer protection section?

Another possibility is Eset Webcam protection in the same section. Eset might be somehow treating this eye interaction device as a webcam.

I don't have Gamer mode enabled. What does that do exactly? I was under the impression that it only mutes notifications so they won't come in my way during gaming.

You're right maybe ESET is thinking it's a webcam, but adding it to the performance exclusions fixed the issue.

[Marcos 5,070]

Does the issue go away after temporarily disabling HIPS and rebooting the machine?

[itman 1,659]

Tobil has an article about excessive CPU use caused by AV scanners here: https://help.tobii.com/hc/en-us/articles/115004039965-High-CPU-usage .

Since the article is 3 years old, it is not a new issue. It appears the present Eset real-time performance exclusion might be be the best current mitigation until Eset can research the issue and find a fix. You might want to open a technical support request to Eset so the issue is documented.

I also noticed in the VirusTotal analysis that this is a .Net app and a lot of downloading occurs from it. Suspect the scanning of these downloads is why CPU acitvity spikes.

 

[Super_Spartan 56]

On 6/21/2020 at 10:19 AM, Marcos said:

Does the issue go away after temporarily disabling HIPS and rebooting the machine?

I didn't try that but as I mentioned, adding Tobbi to the performance exclusions fixed it.

@itman

I just submitted a technical ticket to ESET