Named & Shamed
SOFTWARE WARNING!
21WHAT ARE THEY BARRY’S VILLAIN OF THE FORTNIGHT
TALKING ABOUT?Issue 632 • 25 May – 7 June 2022Trevor Jacob
Ticked off: the three pre-selected options in Driver Reviver that annoyed BarryBarry Collins puts the boot into tech villains, jargon-
spouting companies and software trying to trick you
Driver Reviver’s PUP-like tickboxes
R
eader Virginia
McGovern got a bit of
a shock when she
downloaded Driver Reviver- from respectable software outfit Corel,
no less – and was warned by Windows
that it contained malware.
Virginia told us that she downloaded
the program from the company’s official
website (www.reviversoft.com) and both
Windows and Malwarebytes flagged it as
containing the Win32/Caypnamer.A!ml
Trojan – a piece of malware that can be
very tricky to remove. And she’s not the
only one. A Google search revealed others
had found the same file lurking in the
software.
A spokesperson for Corel told me that
the reported malware was a false positive,
which can “sometimes happen if the
specific antivirus software being used
takes a hard stance on system utilities apps”.
In the name of science, I donned a pair
of rubber gloves and downloaded Driver
Reviver on to a test PC myself. I didn’t get
the Trojan and Windows was quite happy
to let it pass. However, Malwarebytes did
flag the entire tool as a PUP (Potentially
Unwanted Program), and it’s not hard to
s e e w h y.
A quick look in the software’s settings
reveals three of my pet hates are
automatically ticked: run on start-up (^1
in our screenshot), annoying splash
screens 2 , and the option to “show other
product recommendations for my PC”^3.
A long post on the Malwarebytes forum
(www.snipca.com/41824) gives otherreasons why they mark it as PUP.
“These so-called ‘system optimisers’ use
intentional false positives to convince
users that their systems have problems,”
it claims. “Then they try to sell you their
software, claiming it will remove these
problems.”
Is Driver Reviver spreading malware?
Probably not. But I wouldn’t install it on
my PC, either.The closest most YouTube
‘celebrities’ come to serious
harm is when they shove a
pack of Mentos chewing
gum into a Coke bottle and
don’t stand back quickly
enough. Trevor Jacob raised
the bar by deliberately crashing his
light aircraft to seek fame.
The former Olympic snowboarder
posted the video last year, seemingly
bailing out of the plane in a parachute
above the Los Padres National Forestin California
(pictured). Jacob claimed the
engine had cut out and that
he was “lucky to be alive”.
But US air regulators
found that he’d opened the
plane door before the engine
‘failure’, and made no attempt to
contact air traffic control or find a
safe place to land. In other words, he
faked it, “endangering life and
property”. He’s now been banned
from the skies, if not from YouTube.WHAT THEY SAY
Microsoft http://www.snipca.com/41825
“Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Fraud
Protection’s proprietary risk assessment,
which leverages adaptive AI to assist in
real-time fraud detection by identifying
risky behaviours across purchase,
account and in-store activities, has been
integrated with Mastercard’s Digital
Transaction Insights to better enable real-
time intelligence sharing.”WHAT THEY MEAN
We fight fraud in ways you could never
understand (and we can’t describe).1
2
3