Autoupdate *that*, Google!

[torkell]

Google's autoupdater is a persistent little git, I'll give it that.

The old version of the toolbar is stored as C:\Program Files\Google\GoogleToolbar1.dll. What appears to happen is the updater creates GoogleToolbar2.dll, and registers that in COM. No idea if the old file is deregistered.

Plan A of reregister the old version and hope it didn't notice was doomed from the beginning. The updater saw through that attempt and behaved as normal

Plan B of the same, but then copy the old to where it expects the new and deny writes using NTFS permissions also failed. Instead of creating GoogleToolbar2.dll, GoogleToolbar3.dll was created.

Plan C, however, involves following Plan A and then using NTFS permissions to deny all modifications to the entirety of C:\Program Files\Google.
This appears to be quite successful. The updater can't really do anything if it can't create the new file, or modify or delete the old one. Worst it can do is clobber the registery settings for the toolbar. And that can probably be fixed by applying a similar ACL to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google.

Autoupdate that, Google!

Comments

From Dom - your housemate

[(Anonymous)]

Why not rename the one you want as the one it is currently? I imagine the updater is not looking at the contents of the file - so much as the *name* of the file.

Re: From Dom - your housemate

[ralesk.livejournal.com]

Wasn’t that Plan B?

Re: From Dom - your housemate

[torkell]

That was Plan B. The autoupdater is too smart for that - it increments the file number and creates a new one.

[ralesk.livejournal.com]

Yeah… my dad’s been really annoyed by this behaviour lately as well. Not to mention that the new toolbar doesn’t import his look-and-feel options and clutters everything :/

[torkell]

Well, if the toolbar's installed on a NTFS partition then plan C seems to work perfectly. And the updater doesn't clobber the old file, so you can use that.

Which reminds me, I'd better copy the file to use next time I reinstall windows.

[olego.livejournal.com]

You guys use the Google Toolbar?

*is an Opera user*

By the way, how do you apply an ACL to a program? Or must you just say that `whoami` is unable to edit this key?

[ralesk.livejournal.com]

He thinks IE is the best browser ever…

I use Konqueror and Firefox and both have 1) search toolbars I never use 2) search keywords.

[torkell]

It's a perfectly good web browser. Given that I don't want tabs, and that sites generally render acceptably in IE (if not perfectly), I see no reason to change. They've all got gaping security holes in them.

[olego.livejournal.com]

About search keywords: can I program Firefox to respond to "i query" as "imdb.com/search?n=query"? If so, please tell me how! :-)

[ralesk.livejournal.com]

Supposedly some new system in the works is going to allow that (maybe in 2.0 already? dunno).

[torkell]

I added an ACL to the folder for the group "Everyone" denying all writes. Since the program must run under the context of some user account, it is affected. Even LocalSystem is denied writes.

[ralesk.livejournal.com]

Haha, that icon still strikes me with the “huh! did I post?” feeling XD

[pleaseremove.livejournal.com]

It so fits this post though. Read the last line of it and then look at that picture wile thinking *fanfair music* and you will understand why I chuckled when I saw it.

[ralesk.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know it does :) Thing is though, he nicked the icon from me (which is, actually, perfectly fine with me, but I still get surprised by it).