updated msm.trid.xml for Windows Installer Merge Module *.msm

Started by jenderek, April 24, 2020, 02:54:08 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

jenderek

Hello trid users,

some days ago i run trid on Windows Installer Merge Modules (*.msm). Many
are not recognized as "Windows Installer Merge Module" by msm.trid.xml.
Instead these samples are described as "Microsoft Windows Installer" by
msi.trid.xml (See appended output/trid-v-old.txt)

For comparison reason i run other file identifying tools. The newest file(1)
command has also difficulties and was not able to distinguish between
Windows Installer MSI, MSM and PCP (See appended output/file-new.txt)

On page about Windows Installer on Wikipedia is mentioned that MSM samples are
used as merge modules. So instead global Microsoft page i now use this site
as reference URL. This is now expressed by reference URL line like:
   <RefURL>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Installer</RefURL>
Furthermore i add a user defined mime type. That is expressed by line line:
   <Mime>application/x-ms-msm</Mime>

After running tridscan on unrecognized samples in global string section many
long sentences now vanish like:
   <String>THE REGISTRY VALUE NAME.PRIMARY KEY</String>
Furthermore i also delete non making sense phrases like:
   <String>ATION</String>
   <String>FOR W</String>

With the updated trid definitions all my inspected MSM samples are now
recognized, but often the MSI description still comes first. (See appended
output/trid-new-v.txt). So probably the trid definition for MSI also need some
refinements, but i do not know what phrases are required key words and which
are optional. Further more for Windows installer PCP a trid definition is
missing. I will try to do this work. Furthermore there seems to exist a MSM
variant which is not based on Generic OLE2, but seems to use the CAB format
as container. I will try to look for these examples.

TrID definition, some examples and output are stored in archive msm.zip. I
hope that my updated XML file can be used in future version of triddefs.

With best wishes
Jörg Jenderek

Mark0

They are indeed all very similar formats. We'll see.
Thanks for the updated def!