Free Download Manager

Last updated

Free Download Manager
Developer(s) SoftDeluxe
Initial release2004;19 years ago (2004)
Stable release
6.19.0.5156 [1]   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg / 13 March 2023;9 months ago (13 March 2023)
Repository
Written in C++
Operating system Windows, macOS, Linux (.deb) and Android
Platform Hardware: IA-32 and x64
Software: Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Opera, Mozilla Firefox, Netscape, Apple Safari, SeaMonkey
Size Varies with the devices [2]
Available in30 [3] languages
List of languages
Albanian, Arabic, Brazilian Bulgarian, Chinese Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Macedonian, Persian Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese-Brazil, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Traditional, Turkish, Uzbek, Vietnamese.
Type Download manager, BitTorrent client & Productivity software
License Proprietary
Website www.freedownloadmanager.org   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg

Free Download Manager is a download manager for Windows, macOS, Linux and Android. [4] [5]

Contents

Free Download Manager is proprietary software, but was free and open-source software between versions 2.5 [6] and 3.9.7. Starting with version 3.0.852 (15 April 2010), the source code was made available in the project's Subversion repository instead of being included with the binary package. This continued until version 3.9.7. [7] The source code for version 5.0 and newer is not available and the GNU General Public License agreement has been removed from the app.

The ability to download YouTube videos was included in the program's functionality until October 16th, 2021, when one of the developers, Alex, indicated that Google had filed a complaint report, requesting the option be disabled. [8] Attempts to download any videos from YouTube currently result in the message, "Youtube downloads are not available" being shown in the download box. A resolution with Google's legal team still has yet to be reached.

It was found that the website freedownloadmanager.org was spreading Linux malware for over three years until 2022. Researchers discovered that the site was intermittently redirecting users to domains that served a malicious version of the Free Download Manager software. This malware included a script that installed a backdoor on Linux devices to steal passwords, browsing history, cryptocurrency wallet files, and cloud service credentials. The infection was uncovered in September 2023 though it had been active since 2020. It is believed to have been a supply chain attack impacting the legitimate Free Download Manager project. The malware went undetected for years due to the stealthy nature of Linux threats compared to Windows. The administrators of the site did not respond to notifications about the campaign. [9]

Features

Tabs

See also

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References

  1. Error: Unable to display the reference properly. See the documentation for details.
  2. "Free Download Manager Downloads". Free Download Manager Downloads. Retrieved 28 May 2021.
  3. "Multi Language Support". Free Download Manager Features.
  4. "Free Download Manager - download everything from the internet". freedownloadmanager.org. Retrieved 28 May 2021.
  5. "Free Download Manager - Download torrents, videos". Google Play Store.
  6. "FDM 2.5 is released!". Free Download Manager blog. 15 April 2007. Archived from the original on 31 August 2007.
  7. "Free Download Manager". SCM Repositories. SourceForge. Retrieved 22 September 2018.
  8. Hashrate, Miners (5 November 2021). "Free Download Manager removes support for YouTube downloads". www.bitcoinminershashrate.com. Retrieved 4 December 2022.
  9. Goodin, Dan (12 September 2023). "Password-stealing Linux malware served for 3 years and no one noticed". Ars Technica. Retrieved 13 September 2023.
  10. "Free Download Manager | Features". freedownloadmanager.org. Retrieved 27 May 2021.
  11. "Blog Archive » Current stable version: FDM ver. 3.9.2 build 1303". Free Download Manager. 27 December 2012. Retrieved 14 June 2013.
  12. "Free Download Manager - Download torrents, videos - Apps on Google Play". Google Play. Retrieved 28 May 2021.