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I nearly clicked on the button in the top banner ad to start my download.
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What confused me in the experience was when I got to the download page, there are ads that have big, green, prominent "Start Download" buttons on them, meaning of course to start a download of the software featured in the ad. But everyone has already said plenty about the installer wrapper already, I don't think I can add much more. The toolbar wrapper was a surprise and a real disappointment and somehow I was awake enough to not opt-in to installing it. Good grief, I just ran into this today trying to get an MD5 checker. Write to your Privacy Commissioner and say so.įollow on Twitter for the latest computer security news.įollow on Instagram for exclusive pics, gifs, vids and LOLs! We think that opt-in should always be the default. Here at Naked Security we feel pretty strongly about opt-out. If you would like to opt out of the Installer you can submit a request to All opt-out requests are carefully reviewed on a case-by-case basis. But CNET’s logic appears to be back-to-front on this score, too.Ĭan I opt out of the CNET Installer? Anything outside the obvious remit of the installer should be clearly and unequivocally opt-in, not opt-out.įurthermore, before wrapping any software in a foistware downloader, CNET should require the software developer to opt in. * A software installation for product X which attempts to foist an unrelated product Y onto your computer by default is poor security practice. Always abide by the both the letter and the spirit of the licence. * Open-source software may be free, but unless it’s public domain, it’s not free-for-all.
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Official download repositories typically include advice and guidelines – including how to verify the correctness of your download – which are missing on unofficial sites. * Getting people into the habit of installing software in an unofficial way from an unofficial source is poor security practice. * Taking someone else’s work, even if it is open source and free, and using it as a drawcard for your own unrelated commercial purposes, is just plain unfair. So the first order of business is to notify the community so that nobody else falls for this scheme. Then the next time the user opens their browser, they find that their computer is hosed with crappy toolbars, Bing searches, Microsoft as their home page, and whatever other shenanigans the software performs! The worst thing is that users will think we (Nmap Project) did this to them!
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The problem is that users often just click through installer screens, trusting that gave them the real installer and knowing that the Nmap project wouldn't put malicious code in our installer. As he pointed out recently in a post to the North American Network Operators’ Group (Nanog) mailing list: And once you have the Babylon Toolbar, your browser experience is very different indeed. But accepting only means you accept the “special offer” of the toolbar. The wrapper pops up a dialog headlined “Nmap”, with a bright green default “Accept” button.
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You can decline to install the toolbar, but the layout and the logical progression of CNET’s wrapper software makes it all-too-easy to accept Babylon’s software by default. The foistware chosen by CNET and apparently endorsed by Nmap could be changed at any time.) (At least, it’s the Babylon Toolbar at the moment. On your way to the Nmap download, you’re rather pushily offered the Babylon Toolbar first. Instead, CNET has wrapped the Nmap installer with a program of its own.
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The problem is to be found on, the well-known file repository operated by technology media company CNET.ĬNET offers you a free download of Nmap, but not from Fyodor’s own site. I even went all the way to Las Vegas to give Fyodor a 2010 Sophos DECODEME T-shirt because its design and layout was automated using a Lua program.) (I have a particular fondness for Nmap because it’s liberally extensible with a scripting engine which uses Lua, my favourite programming language. It can help you locate rogue PCs and servers, spot services which shouldn’t be running, identify firewalls and routers on your network, and much more. If you’ve ever done any network troubleshooting or security assessment, you’ve probably used it. He is the creator and maintainer of the widely-used network auditing and penetration-testing tool Nmap. You probably know him better by his nickname, Fyodor (after Fyodor Dostoyevsky, author of Notes From Undergound). Gordon Lyon is a popular, successful and charismatic open-source software maker.
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