shareaza.com is fake

[Red Squirrel]

I can't believe I fell for this, but I did. Thankfully I was installing in a VM and not on my main machine. Basically shareaza.com is a rip off version with spyware and a bunch of crap.

See here:

http://www.shareazasecurity.be...viewtopic.php?f=46&t=8

This copy of shareaza is notable for it's failure to even start, with a iphlpapi.dll error.

 

[mechBgon]

I see that the installer file is also not detected by any of the 32 security products at VirusTotal.com.

 

[Red Squirrel]

YEah well this is sort of shareaza's fault in a way. They used to be at shareaza.com but for whatever reason did not renew that domain and went to shareaza.sourceforge.net. Thats a rule of thumb if you own a domain you NEVER let it expire since someone will take it to take advantage of the popularity. Thats exactly what happened. I typed shareaza in google and that was first site, looked like the official, did not think twice and downloaded it. Running full spyware/virus scan on the VM now, and I got the right version of shareaza which has the shareaza icon as the installer.

Though the installer uses a different icon

 

[mechBgon]

Reportedly, old versions of the software look to shareaza.com for updates because they were built that way, so a legitimate older version could try to foist the fake 4.0 version on the user when it checks for updates. You got to admit, the bad guys are adroit.