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.
Sign Visual Studio Extension and Add-In installers
Sign your VSIX or Add-In installers and give your customers peace of mind that your software is genuine.