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Any sufficiently advanced uninstaller is indistinguishable from malware

devblogs.microsoft.com

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Re: Any sufficiently advanced uninstaller is indistinguishable from malware

#291

Post by bee_rider »

ateng wrote: post #267
jraph wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, now for completeness I should mention that Linux package formats usually allow packagers to provide arbitrary pre- and post- install shell scripts ran as root. (which means that if you don't trust a provider, not only it's not safe to run the program, but it's also unsafe to install it)

>if you don't trust a provider, not only it's not safe to run the program, but it's also unsafe to install it Isn't it same for windows right now? `.msi` and `.exe` can execute arbitrary code right?

The only difference is that you usually trust the repo in Linux, but that’s a pretty significant “only thing,” in the sense that the repo is already the source of your whole system, so it better be trustworthy!

Re: Any sufficiently advanced uninstaller is indistinguishable from malware

#292

Post by EvanAnderson »

blackpill0w wrote: post #149

Why do Windows programs need special installers/uninstallers? Why isn't this handled by Windows itself?

Windows has had an installer as an OS component since the late 90s (called Windows Installer). As a sysadmin I'd prefer apps use it. Many application developers do not. It's maddening. (Doubly so when Microsoft themselves don't use it-- newer versions of Office, Teams, etc. Microsoft suffers from too much NIH.)

I get unattended installs and uninstalls "for free" when well-behaved applications use Windows Installer. Patching is included, too. Customizing installations is fairly straightforward.

On the developer side it has historically used a very quirky proprietary file format (MSI) with a fairly steep learning curve and a ton of "tribal knowledge" required to make it work for all but the most trivial cases. (Though, to be fair, most installs are the trivial case-- copy some files, throw some stuff into the registry, make some shortcuts.)

Worse, it allows for arbitrary code execution ("Custom Actions"), at which point all bets are off re: unattended installs, removal, etc. Some Windows Installer packages are just "wrapped" EXEs (Google Chrome, for example).

I've packaged a ton of 3rd party software as Windows Installer packages. It's an ugly system with lots of warts and legacy crap, but if you need to load an application on a large number of Windows PCs reliably unattended it's decently fit for purpose.

There is reasonable free and libre tooling to generate MSI packages from plain text source (the WiX toolkit) and it can be used in a CI pipeline.

Re: Any sufficiently advanced uninstaller is indistinguishable from malware

#293

Post by Zambyte »

j16sdiz wrote: post #286
tetris11 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It usually doesn't, and it's mostly a good standards recommendation that even the most GPL of GPL codebases doesn't always follow (looking at you, emacs).

GNU emacs was created at 1984. XDG Base Directory spec was started around 2003..

Also Emacs will reapect files being placed in XDG directories, it just doesn't put them there...

Re: Any sufficiently advanced uninstaller is indistinguishable from malware

#294

Post by mschuster91 »

TheNewsIsHere wrote: post #279
tmpX7dMeXU wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not a user-specified authority.

I would also like this option. I see why Apple finds it undesirable though. Software installation safeguards are a game of whack-a-mole with (e.g.) support scammers who ask grandma/Lee-in-accounting/Cindy-next-door to naively click through all the warnings. The closest Apple comes to this capability is achieved via device Supervision and MDM, which might be comfortable for some of us here in this forum but obviously…

> Baddies keep ruining all the fun for the rest of us.

IMHO the blame rather lies with our politicians who are unwilling to take the steps necessary to cut the baddies off from the Internet. Let's see just how fast India, Pakistan, Turkey and other scammer hotspots clean up their act when the US+EU threaten to cut them off from the Internet and SS7 unless the scam callcenters are closed down for good... the amount of corruption regularly exposed by scambaiters on Youtube is insane. Billions of dollars of damages each year [1] from that bullshit and our politicians don't. fucking. care.

[1] https://www.vibesofindia.com/fraudsters-in-india-cost-americ...

Re: Any sufficiently advanced uninstaller is indistinguishable from malware

#295

Post by Zambyte »

Hikikomori wrote: post #255
tetris11 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that very anti-linux though, to have a directory owned by root but populated with subfolders owned by other users? /home is the only exception I can think of that does this.

/tmp

And /run/user

Re: Any sufficiently advanced uninstaller is indistinguishable from malware

#296

Post by madeofpalk »

irusensei wrote: post #253
highwaylights wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think any major desktop OS handles this well. I suspect the final form for software installation is probably where iOS and Android are going in the EU, where there's a single means of installing software to the device so that everything can be sandboxed properly, but the acquisition/update process can be pointed to a URL/Store that the user has pre-approved. macOS comes pretty close to what I'd ideally want i…

Everyone is pointing at Windows but there are still installer software on MacOS. Normally crusty old corpoware like Citrix that needs to extend its tentacles to the whole system. On Unix/Linux land the prevalence of pipe curl to bash type installers is not much different. I normally keep both types away from my computers.

Only installers I’ve seen are the .installer bundles, which leave behind a manifest for automated uninstalling.

Re: Any sufficiently advanced uninstaller is indistinguishable from malware

#300

Post by ChrisSD »

jcarrano wrote: post #299

The guys at MS are smart enough to decompile assembly but still not enough to have a proper inode-based filesystem where you can delete files that are in use.

It has little to do with the filesystem. Windows has OS level locks. In the case of a running executable, the mapped memory holds a lock on the exe file to prevent deleting it. This is intentional. If it didn't hold the lock then it would be possible to delete the exe file on modern versions of Windows.

Edit: since there still seems to be confusion I'll try to be clearer. On NTFS you can delete an open file. This is a solved problem. The DeleteFile API even does this by default now. The thing that prevents deletion is an OS lock. This lock only prevents deletion. Renames are still allowed.

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