Advanced Installer Features - Digital Signatures
Today's users and organizations are
becoming increasingly wary about installing software of uncertain
provenience on their computers. By digitally signing your installers and
products in Advanced Installer, you will increase your
user's confidence in you and your company, giving them peace of mind
about your software.
Sign both your
MSI and EXE installers
With the latest Windows Vista and Windows XP SP2 operating
systems, it is becoming vitally important to digitally sign your
install packages. The security mechanisms in the latest OSs will look
for and use the digital signatures in the user
notification dialogs and security warnings.
All screenshots on this page were taken using Advanced Installer's
install package itself as an example. When you sign with your own
digital signature, your own company and product will appear as the
publisher instead of "Caphyon" and "Advanced Installer".

Launching
a downloaded MSI digitally signed with Advanced
Installer

Launching an unsigned package on Windows XP SP
2
Sign files
included in your installation
A new security addition in Microsoft Windows Vista is the User Account
Control (UAC) which will prompt for user's permission every
time a program (an application or an installer) needs additional
permissions to perform an administrative operation on the user's
computer. This elevation dialog also takes advantage of the digital
signature, if found.

UAC
elevation prompt for a product digitally signed with Advanced
Installer

UAC
elevation prompt for an unsigned product
Advanced Installer allows you digitally sign
any eligible file included in your installation in a single, simple,
integrated build step. Furthermore, all executable files generated by
Advanced Installer (Auto Updater, Autorun launcher,
Java Native Launcher, etc.) are marked to be signed as soon as a
certificate is provided.
Sign patches
and external cabinet files
Signing all install archives allows Windows Installer to verify
their integrity and detect possible corruptions before installing.
By also signing patches you can
enable least-privileged user account patching without UAC elevation
prompts on Windows Vista.
Advanced Installer - Features