Alpha Source (Fried Cookie Ltd.) – 12% Detection Rate – InstallCore

digital signature, misleading advertising, ,

Welcome! Just a tiny post on a publisher called Alpha Source (Fried Cookie Ltd.) before going back to some coding on FreeFixer.

By examining the certificate, we can see that Alpha Source (Fried Cookie Ltd.) appears to be located in Tel Aviv in Israel. The certificate is issued by GlobalSign CodeSigning CA – G2.

Alpha Source (Fried Cookie Ltd.)

The problem here is that if mozilla_firefox.exe really was an installer for Mozilla Firefox, it would have been digitally signed by Mozilla Corporation and not by some unknown company. Here’s how the authentic Mozilla Firefox looks like when you double click on it. Notice that the “Verified publisher” says “Mozilla Corporation”.
Mozilla Corporation publisher

When I uploaded the Alpha Source (Fried Cookie Ltd.) file to VirusTotal, it came up with a 12% detection rate. The file is detected as Application.Win32.InstallCore.AKL by Comodo, a variant of Win32/InstallCore.UN by ESET-NOD32, Win32/Virus.Adware.eef by Qihoo-360 and InstallCore (fs) by VIPRE.

Alpha Source Fried Cookie Ltd virustotal

Did you also find an Alpha Source (Fried Cookie Ltd.)? Do you remember the download link? Please post it in the comments below and I’ll upload it to VirusTotal to see if that one is also detected.

Thanks for reading.