CNET Controversy

CNET's Download.com has been known for years and they built a good reputation in the past, but a simple mistake could ruin it. Gordon Lyon or more popularly known as Fyodor (the author of NMap) sent a post on seclist complaining that CNET is now repackaged his package with another installer which will install additional toolbar application when user accepted them during installation. The additional toolbar will change your computer's setting and it can be considered as a trojan for some anti virus.

Sean Murphy, the vice president and GM of CNET posted an apology statement and willing to fix this, but there has been some doubt from some people because there might be a specific deal to include these application within other popular open source applications such as NMap and VLC.

If you don't trust them yet, it would be better to get the application straight from the author's website and not from CNET Also make sure to check the checksum through MD5 or SHA1 values (if provided).