I'm only assuming here, but maybe because it won't crash explorer and it's just a few lines of self-documenting code?
I'm only assuming here, but maybe because it won't crash explorer and it's just a few lines of self-documenting code?
I guess they could do this more robustly. I.e pause the entire explorer process, save all its state, remotely allocate new memory to inject their code, remotely create a new thread, run only that thread using the injected code, restore all the process' state and finally start it running where it left off. A script would be easier though.
I would have assumed (naively?) that they could just copy their uninstaller into a temp folder and run it from there, and just rely on the OS to nuke it in due time, but as a consumer I appreciate the thoroughness of an uninstaller that leaves no trace.
Both detouring and remote thread injection are supported on Windows, but fall into the category of gray-hat techniques; there are some legitimate uses but quite a lot of illegitimate uses, and using these techniques correctly (without crashing anything!) can be a real challenge.