InstallCore was an installation and content distribution platform created by ironSource, including a

software development kit A software development kit (SDK) is a collection of software development tools in one installable package. They facilitate the creation of applications by having a compiler, debugger and sometimes a software framework. They are normally specific ...

(SDK) for

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...

and

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

. The program allowed those using it for distribution to include monetization by advertisements, charging for installation, etc., and took pains to make its installations invisible to the user and to anti-virus software. The platform, and programs using it, have been rated

potentially unwanted program A potentially unwanted program (PUP) or potentially unwanted application (PUA) is software that a user may perceive as unwanted or unnecessary. It is used as a subjective tagging criterion by security and parental control products. Such software ma ...

s (PUP) or potentially unwanted applications (PUA) by anti-malware product vendors since 2014,Detailed Threat Analysis
- Sophos, 8 Dec 2014 and by

Windows Defender Antivirus Microsoft Defender Antivirus (formerly Windows Defender) is an anti-malware component of Microsoft Windows. It was first released as a downloadable free anti-spyware program for Windows XP and was shipped with Windows Vista and Windows 7. It h ...

since 2015.PUA:Win32/InstallCore
- Windows, Mar 11 2015 The platform was primarily designed for efficient web based deployment of various type of application software. installCore was managing 100 million installations every month, offering services for paid, unpaid and free software (using the SDK version). installCore was a product of ironSource, which is headquartered in Tel Aviv with offices in San Francisco, California in the United States and Beijing, China. InstallCore was discontinued as part of a company flotation in late 2020.

History

The InstallCore team introduced the first version of the SDK at the beginning of 2011, the SDK was a fork of the FoxTab installer and had only basic Installation features. The first version only include three files - system.js, application.js and packages.js which support over the web software packages delivery and basic system modifications. The second version introduced debug capabilities, support for the different windows versions and web forms support; it also enabled integration of

JQuery jQuery is a JavaScript library designed to simplify HTML DOM tree traversal and manipulation, as well as event handling, CSS animation, and Ajax. It is free, open-source software using the permissive MIT License. As of Aug 2022, jQuery is ...

and CSS 2.1 for better UI design

Features

InstallCore development platform provides a

(SDK) based on

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of Website, websites use JavaScript on the Client (computing), client side ...

and

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...

/HTML 5.0. Installation project can be compiled into a windows executable file and used for the software installation and distribution. The platform supports the following features: *Small stub (347 KB) *JavaScript based *Multilingual (Chinese and RTL languages are supported from version 3.1) * LZMA compression *Integrated download accelerator for remote files *

Content delivery network A content delivery network, or content distribution network (CDN), is a geographically distributed network of proxy servers and their data centers. The goal is to provide high availability and performance by distributing the service spatially r ...

(CDN), hosting files for download *Reporting and

business intelligence Business intelligence (BI) comprises the strategies and technologies used by enterprises for the data analysis and management of business information. Common functions of business intelligence technologies include reporting, online analytical pr ...

module

JavaScript and HTML based user interface

Version 2.1 introduced a fully customizable design interface based on HTML, CSS and a JavaScript SDK.

Hello World!

Since installCore version 4.10 the SDK integrated 12 fully pre-designed templates and a customization tool to create a

WYSIWYG In computing, WYSIWYG ( ), an acronym for What You See Is What You Get, is a system in which editing software allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, such as a printed d ...

design.

Monetization features

The program has features supporting generation of revenue for users by advertising, charging for program installation, etc. *Full Windows API support, including full file system and registry access, loading and execution of dynamic link libraries and executing files. *Ad server technology, named FlowAutomator, to support optional 3rd party products during installations *Client side profiling algorithms, including data of previous downloads. *Full Html UI support including JQuery, Zepto.js and CSS 4.0 *Optional Pay-per-install (PPI) monetization component

Compiler make script

The installCore compiler program HtmlUiMaker uses a make script , such as the following example, in order to compile a JavaScript and HTML skin into executable installation programs. ; Example Make script - Set Parameters PP_MAKER; App_Maker parameters used to create output EXE file SKIN="\skin" ; Set installer icon APP_ICON="\resources\installer.ico" RAW_EXE=Setup32.exe COMPRESS=1 OUT_EXE=\release\%EXE_CODE%Setup_v%VI_FILE_VER%.exe

Criticism and malware classification

installCore and software packages relying on it have been classified as

(PUP) or potentially unwanted application (PUA), by anti-malware product vendors and Windows Defender Antivirus from 2014-2015 onwards, with many stating that it installs

adware Adware, often called advertising-supported software by its developers, is software that generates revenue for its developer by automatically generating online advertisements in the user interface of the software or on a screen presented to the ...

and other additional PUPs.

Malwarebytes Malwarebytes Inc. is an American Internet security company that specializes in protecting home computers, smartphones, and companies from malware and other threats. It has offices in Santa Clara, California; Clearwater, Florida; Tallinn, Estonia ...

identified the program as "a family of bundlers that installs more than one application on the user's computer". It has been described as crossing "the line into full-blown malware" and a "nasty Trojan".

Generated installer

The generated installer is a

Portable Executable The Portable Executable (PE) format is a file format for executables, object code, DLLs and others used in 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows operating systems. The PE format is a data structure that encapsulates the information necessary f ...

which contains the installation script. The installer can be configured to function as full installer or a bootstrap installer. As the installation script is compiled, it cannot be obtained from the delivered executable without reverse-engineering the binary.

Multilingual support

As of version 3.1 of the official release installCore fully supported both Unicode and RTL but depended on Windows 2000 with SP 4 as minimum requirement to accurately present the UI.

References

External links

*{{Official website, http://www.installcore.com/
Developer SiteHistorical SDK Documentation
Adware Installation software Programming tools Software companies of Israel