Reducing abuse of PECompact by malware authors

[Jeremy Collake]

There appears to have recently been an increase in the number of malware applications compressed with PECompact. I believe malware authors prefer PECompact because of its extensibility (plug-ins) and good anti-virus interoperability. In the case of some other compressors, the anti-malware companies flag every compressed executable, good or bad, as malware.

To help reduce anti-viral false alarms caused by this increase in malware use of PECompact, the following actions will be reluctantly taken:

• Student version of PECompact will no longer be available.
• The trial version will no longer include as many plug-ins nor any documentation about how to create plug-ins.
• The Freeware-only License for PECompact will now cost $19.95.
• Violators of PECompact licensing will be identified and their names published to discourage further copyright violation. Other actions will be taken as necessary.

I regret having to take these actions, so if there are any parties out there negatively affected, please email me (jeremy.collake@gmail.com) and I can perhaps provide you with a freeware-only PECompact license or extended trial period.

These actions will take affect soon.