Verifying authenticity of anti-malware tool

Dear Experts,

I normally try to get some indication that I downloaded a trustworthy executable for anti-malware program that I want to run. Often, I do this by making sure signature under the file's "Digital Signatures" will tell me "Digital Signature is OK".

I'd like to run Gmer anti-rootkit tool but its download does not contain such signature. This means that if I do have some malware - it might have redirected me to a file which in itself could be an even work malware...

What's the correct way to ensure my gmer.exe is the right one? (BTW, the copy on download.cnet.com has different size and is also unsigned.)

Thank you!

Please note that this is both a general question on how to authenticate validity of such software AND a specific question with regards to gmer.

 

Any words of wisdom?

 

If you believe your system is, or may be compromised you should follow the: READ & RUN ME FIRST. Malware Removal Guide.

Then start a new thread in the: Malware Removal forum and attach the logs that were created while going through the READ & RUN ME FIRST guide. Then be patient(don't bump) as they are busy and you would only put yourself farther down the list. Try not to make any changes to your system. Once one of the Malware Removal experts has responded, follow the his/her instructions implicitly.

If you've decided to follow the above then, while you wait, you might want to take a look at: How to Protect yourself from malware!.

That said, you could upload the Gmer file you have to: Virus Total and see if the results look something like this: Gmer.exe results. Another thought would be to find a machine that you're confident is not compromised, use it to download Gmer, copy it to a flash stick(pen drive) or cd even a floppy if that will work for you and run that copy of Gmer.

If you decide to download it again make sure and get it here.

"BTW, the copy on download.cnet.com has different size and is also unsigned." A different size compared to?? The version(1.0.15.15281) I downloaded from MajorGeeks is 278.24KB zipped, extracted Gmer.exe is 286.50KB and is the one listed in the "Gmer.exe results" link above.

Hopefully someone else will come along with other and better ideas than these.