Understanding Malware Risks From Free Download Manager on Linux

We do not often talk about Linux malware because it is often quickly patched up and not exploited much in the wild compared to Windows/macOS. However, there has been a concern regarding the Free Download Manager (a decently popular cross-platform download manager).

While we do not recommend it on our  available for Linux, some of our readers have suggested it in the past. And I have used it as well up until now on Windows.

So, what is the issue?

Free Download Manager is not malware. However, a malicious package for Linux was found, distributed as Free Download Manager.

Security researchers at Kaspersky discovered that it existed for at least two years (2020-2022) without users knowing what they were installing.