Hi Folks.  A lot has happened since yesterday’s email about Download.com’s antics (http://seclists.org/nmap-hackers/2011/5) and I wanted to send a quick update.

First of all, several people complained about my angry tone and my telling Download.com to “****” themselves.  I appologize to anyone offended.  But if you ever spend more than 14 years creating free software as a gift to the community, only to have it used as bait by a giant corporation to infect your users with malware, then you may understand my rage.

The good news is that many users are sick and tired of having their machines hijacked by malware.  Especially by CNET Download.Com, which still says on their own adware policy page:

 ”In your letters, user reviews, and polls, you told us bundled adware was unacceptable–no matter how harmless it might be. We want
  you to know what you’re getting when you download from CNET Download.com, and no other download site can promise that.”
  –http://www.cnet.com/2723-13403_1-461-16.html

Um, what people WANT when they download Nmap is Nmap itself.  Not to have their searches redirected to Bing and their home page changed to Microsoft’s MSN.

Speaking of which, Microsoft emailed me today.  They said that they didn’t know they were sponsoring CNET to trojan open source software, and that they have stopped doing it.  But the trojan installer uses your Internet connection to obtain more “special offers” from CNET, and they immediately switched to installing a “Babylon toolbar” and search engine redirect instead.  Then CNET removed that and are now promoting their own “techtracker” tool.  Apparently the heat is so high that even malware vendors are refusing to have any more part in CNET’s antics!  But if CNET isn’t stopped, the malware vendors will come crawling back eventually and CNET will be there to receive them.

There have been dozens of news articles in the last day and hundreds of outraged comments on blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc.  In the midst of all this terrible PR, Download.com went in last night and quietly switched their Nmap downloads back to our real installer.  At least for now.  But that isn’t enough–they are still infecting the installers for thousands of other packages!  For example, they have
currently infected the installer for a children’s coloring book app:

http://download.cnet.com/Kea-Coloring-Book/3000-2102_4-10360620.html

Have they no shame at all??!

I’ve created a page with the situation background, links to the news articles, and the latest updates:

http://insecure.org/news/download-com-fiasco.html

Feel free to share it.  Together, I hope we can get Download.com to apologize and cease this reprehensible behavior!

Cheers,
Fyodor

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