Identifying Windows Installer Package Files for Detection of Pirated Software

Abstract

Nowadays, pirated software is being illegally distributed in various ways such as websites, peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, blogs, and so on. In order to prevent such illegal distribution of software, it is necessary to identify application programs and filter illegally distributed software online. Unfortunately, the existing methods fail to find pirated software, which is delivered in an installer package file format, because they mainly handle executable file formats. Motivated by this, we propose an efficient identification method for detecting pirated software circulated in the Windows installer package format (.msi file), a representative installer package file format of Windows. Our experiment shows that the proposed method identifies well the programs in the Windows installer package format, thereby defending against unlawful software distribution.