Hello! If you’ve been following me for the last year you know that I’ve been examining many software publishers that put a digital signature on their downloads. Today I found another publisher called Mode Alpha (Fried Cookie Ltd.).

You can also look at the Mode Alpha (Fried Cookie Ltd.) certificate and digital signature by looking under the Digital Signatures tab on the file’s properties. According to the certificate, Mode Alpha (Fried Cookie Ltd.) is located in Tel Aviv, Israel.

What caught my attention was that the download was called Skype_Setup.exe. This might look like an official Skype download, but it is not. If it was an official download, it would have been digitally signed by Skype Software Sarl. Here’s how the authentic Skype looks like when you double click on it. Notice that the “Verified publisher” says “Skype Software Sarl”.

If you are considering to run the Mode Alpha (Fried Cookie Ltd.) signed file, I’ll advice you not to. Delete it instead. Just check out detection list by some of the anti-virus program:

Comodo classifies Skype_Setup.exe as Application.Win32.InstallCore.AKZ, ESET-NOD32 detects it as a variant of Win32/InstallCore.XC potentially unwanted and VIPRE calls it InstallCore (fs).

Did you also find a Mode Alpha (Fried Cookie Ltd.) file?

Thanks for reading.