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Comment by FiveFiftyOne | Hacker News Reader

It was bound to happen eventually. The most troubling thing is that its distributed in pirated software. Don't pirate, run your tests against checksums and keys when you download legitimate software. Of course, this won't cross the mind of many users. An interesting feature would be to combine a checksum with your downloads, which the Mac installer could then verify off of your download page. Invalid checksum = big warning and flashing lights.

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> It was bound to happen eventually

It's happened before (there was a trojan in pirated copies of iWork '09).

Checksums won't help much because pirated software is often expected to be modified and Adobe (for example) doesn't have a lot of interest in providing finely grained checksums so you can make sure your pirated software is safe[1].

[1] Granted, there could be the "well, help us prevent botnets for the greater good" argument, to which Adobe would respond "well, if you stop the piracy it wouldn't be an issue, now would it?"

If a malicious hacker can intercept and manipulate a download, why can't he manipulate the checksum? Just asking :)

It would take a lot of work. I imagine that you'd implement a link to your sites checksums in the code, which the installer would reference during installation. As long as that link is protected within code, it should maintain the validity of any checksums that the installer is referencing.

There is no interception and manipulation of a download going on, at least regarding the botnet the article suggests, it came from knowingly downloading and installing pirated software. The checksum idea is to get the checksum from the official source and to apply it to the pirated download, but then the pirated download is surely modified anyway, so this wouldn't work.

LittleSnitch is an app that will inform you when an outgoing conenction is being made from your Mac. Running this after launching a craked version of PS, for instance, should let you know if you've suddenly been recruited into a botnet.

The first thing a well written trojan does is to disable things like this.

So you catch the not-so-well written trojans.

A really good burglar can pick the locks to my house, but I still lock the door.

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