Comments on: SourceForge-hosted PDFCreator Trojan/Toolbar Warning

By: Jean Lewis

Jean Lewis — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 10:39:54 +0000

Thank you so much for your helpful post about the PDF toolbar. That message has been annoying me for several months – now it’s gone and all thanks to you for pointing out where the trouble lay. I’m very grateful.

By: hinchbox

hinchbox — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 00:04:42 +0000

What has happened at Sourceforge? A few years ago they sent you a rebuke about compromising their site’s security when you forgot your password, and now they are allowing spyware to be uploaded to, and downloaded from their servers?

By: julie

julie — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 11:48:45 +0000

thanks for posting this!

i installed the updated version recently (not being as cautious as usual based on past experience with product–my mistake).

anyway, i wanted to mention (so that others searching for info can make correlation) that this issue was brought to my attn by mcafee alerting me that a program was seeking outbound connection. it was located in program files as a benign-sounding applicationupdater.exe, referencing spigot and the version #

*******
File Information

File Name: ApplicationUpdater.exe
File Size: 380928
File Path: C:\Program Files\Application Updater\
Version: 1.1
First seen: 1/8/2010
Recognized safe program

Manufacturer: Unknown
******

i had already removed the crap before locating your article but found your research/info to be of obvious interest since I only had made the general association. (your article saved me lots of time i would have spent duplicating efforts) so…

…thanks again for sharing your findings!
~julie

By: faargenwelsh

faargenwelsh — Wed, 12 May 2010 12:05:00 +0000

I’ve just finished running a KlamAV (free open source anti-virus software for linux) scan while checking my windows drive (I have a dual-boot install) for problems.

All executables under C:/Program Files/PDFCreator/ are highlighted as containing “Trojan.VB.Chinky-1″.

Man, I was using this program for like several years now! What a shame, really…

By: Mack

Mack — Sun, 02 May 2010 21:08:18 +0000

Sorry, I meant to say qvPDF doesn’t have crap bundled in it like PDFCreator. You might also want to try CutPDF, and doPDF, which are commercial, but free.

By: Mack

Mack — Sun, 02 May 2010 21:03:17 +0000

Try qvPDF instead. It is open source and free and does have crap bundled into like PDFCreator. http://sourceforge.net/projects/qvpdf/

By: Mark

Mark — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 11:37:33 +0000

So many once-loved apps ruining their reputations by including crapware toolbars… it’s a sad thing to see.

By: Axel

Axel — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:45:28 +0000

Oh man, i’m shocked! How the hell could they just possibly think of doing that?! It’s like stabbing you in your back. What a waste of talent.

By: Erik

Erik — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 13:48:54 +0000

Many, many thanx for this post.
I was afraid my PC had been hijacked by aggressive malware.
Removing the search settings plugin corrected everything for me.

By: masken

masken — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 10:13:33 +0000

So is there NO way of installing without getting the addons and yahoo toolbar?

The post above: PDFCreator-0_9_7_setup.exe /components=\”!toolbar\” /tasks=\”!desktop_icon\” does NOT work.