June 6, 2018 Journal article Open Access

Richard Rivera; Platon Kotzias; Avinash Sudhodanan; Juan Caballero

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{
  "inLanguage": {
    "alternateName": "eng", 
    "@type": "Language", 
    "name": "English"
  }, 
  "description": "<p>Freeware is proprietary software that can be used free of charge. A popular vector for distributing freeware are download<br>\nportals, i.e., websites that index, categorize, and host programs. Download portals can be abused to distribute potentially unwanted<br>\nprograms (PUP) and malware. The abuse can be due to PUP and malware authors uploading their ware, by benign freeware<br>\nauthors joining as affiliate publishers of PPI services and other affiliate programs, or by malicious download portal owners. In this<br>\nwork, we perform a systematic study of abuse in download portals. We build a platform to crawl download portals and apply it to<br>\ndownload 191K Windows freeware installers from 20 download portals. We analyze the collected installers and execute them in a<br>\nsandbox to monitor their installation. We measure an overall ratio of PUP and malware between 8% (conservative estimate) and<br>\n26% (lax estimate). In 18 of the 20 download portals examined the amount of PUP and malware is below 9%. But, we also find<br>\ntwo download portals exclusively used to distribute PPI downloaders. Finally, we detail different abusive behaviors that authors of<br>\nundesirable programs use to distribute their programs through download portals.</p>", 
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode", 
  "creator": [
    {
      "affiliation": "IMDEA Software Institute", 
      "@type": "Person", 
      "name": "Richard Rivera"
    }, 
    {
      "affiliation": "IMDEA Software Institute", 
      "@type": "Person", 
      "name": "Platon Kotzias"
    }, 
    {
      "affiliation": "IMDEA Software Institute", 
      "@type": "Person", 
      "name": "Avinash Sudhodanan"
    }, 
    {
      "affiliation": "IMDEA Software Institute", 
      "@type": "Person", 
      "name": "Juan Caballero"
    }
  ], 
  "headline": "Costly Freeware: A Systematic Analysis of Abuse in Download Portals", 
  "image": "https://zenodo.org/static/img/logos/zenodo-gradient-round.svg", 
  "datePublished": "2018-06-06", 
  "url": "https://zenodo.org/record/1295566", 
  "@context": "https://schema.org/", 
  "identifier": "https://doi.org/10.1049/iet-ifs.2017.0585", 
  "@id": "https://doi.org/10.1049/iet-ifs.2017.0585", 
  "@type": "ScholarlyArticle", 
  "name": "Costly Freeware: A Systematic Analysis of Abuse in Download Portals"
}