Accusations of wrong doing?

[Terry Ganzi]

Content source

http://www.slideshare.net/Invincea/the-malware-economy-where-the-money-is

10.Referral Cash Leads to Bundled Malware Referral Abuse payouts drive many of the threats today, bundling spyware programs and Trojans that pays up to 75 bucks for each successful infection! What was supposed to be 7zip was a pile of unwanted programs that each paid the installer cash. Incuded is 866.exe, a variant of botnet Kazy. They did get 7zip. Malware author paid by Ad companies to seed his botnet.

The Malware Economy - Where The Money Is

 

[marg]

7zip must have been doing this for a long time IMO. My virus alert went off when I tried to open it a while back. A lot of free programs now come bundled with adware & worse.

 

[darko999]

I'm an old 7zip user and I have never experienced any kind of issue related to Malware or PuP at least coming from their exe's at "7-zip.org" 7zip is great software and is cool when you find something that works better for you, in my case it works better than winrar

PD: Just to people to do not panic "Sometimes tittles like this makes people to get away from great free software", actul files at 7-zip.org looks cool. There has been of course, malvertising on sourceforge; not to mention CNET.

https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/...d13f55e1feec0b39b655d7fa/analysis/1442810921/

https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/...b5c8e87d80df8e34c4a16fe2/analysis/1442811071/

https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/...994f89b3d652c31e6f6e4c3c/analysis/1442811353/

https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/...666ff6b52a2952df65c702da/analysis/1442811465/

 

[OokamiCreed]

I don't think this is supposed to mean that 7zip is doing this but something that impersonates 7zip instead (very common occurrence - too easy to make malware/adware look like something safe). I will continue to use it as I always have. It's also a good thing to note that many compression software out there use 7zip (such as Bandicam - I mean seriously, look in the installation folder - and as such, Bandicam is very convenient and has very good compression - that is also why a lot of compression software can use 7z format).

 

[Azure]

Here's a post from the guy that made the presentation
PUPs and botnet bundled with 7-zip, according to Invincea | Wilders Security Forums

 

[jamescv7]

If you download the file from an original developer source then its way far to contain viruses/malware unless specified for being bundled; usually third party download distribution modifies their own installer as part to gain revenue in order for accessing your favourite software.

 

[darko999]

Here's a post from the guy that made the presentation
PUPs and botnet bundled with 7-zip, according to Invincea | Wilders Security Forums

This is the best comment I can find there:

"Change the title of this thread!!! Disgustingly misleading. An affront to a stellar program."

 

[soccer97]

I'm an old 7zip user and I have never experienced any kind of issue related to Malware or PuP at least coming from their exe's at "7-zip.org" 7zip is great software and is cool when you find something that works better for you, in my case it works better than winrar

PD: Just to people to do not panic "Sometimes tittles like this makes people to get away from great free software", actul files at 7-zip.org looks cool. There has been of course, malvertising on sourceforge; not to mention CNET.

https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/...d13f55e1feec0b39b655d7fa/analysis/1442810921/

https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/...b5c8e87d80df8e34c4a16fe2/analysis/1442811071/

https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/...994f89b3d652c31e6f6e4c3c/analysis/1442811353/

https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/...666ff6b52a2952df65c702da/analysis/1442811465/

I will say that in those top post Google Ads and/or top posts in the past, there have also been unofficial Flash Player updates back when it was heavily advertised (1-2 yrs ago) by the media to update Flash. Obviously, I didn't browse those sites. My hunch is that they were malware.