Can't run .exe installers while running Mandatory ASLR on Windows 10 x64

Packaging
1

Bug report:

The following applies to all the Windows .exe installers. The .msi installers do not appear to suffer from this problem.

I was able to install the client and server just fine on all my machines (all running Windows 10 x64) until I changed some security settings, then the installer wouldn’t run at all. Specifically, the culprit is found under Settings -> Update & Security -> Windows Security -> App & browser control -> Exploit protection settings -> Force randomization of images (Mandatory ASLR). I changed it from “Use default (off)” to “On by default.”

The new behavior with the new setting when double-clicking on the .exe installer (server or client (either client) will do) is as follows: The user account control window pops up, I click “yes,” then…nothing happens.

A check in the Event Viewer show that a pop-up was supposed to come up (I wonder what happened to it…) showing the following error: UrBackup Server 2.4.13.exe - Application Error : The application was unable to start correctly (0xc000007b). Click OK to close the application.

I’ll switch over to the .msi installers for the future. Just thought I should pass on that I ran into the problem.

2

In short, you really shouldn’t set that option unless you are prepared to mitigate all the applications and executables that will likely fail, if they were not compiled to support ASLR.

See the following for more info:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/should-i-enable-force-randomization-for-images/cbf4883c-aeb4-4030-89f7-186ce3865a0a?auth=1

https://msrc-blog.microsoft.com/2017/11/21/clarifying-the-behavior-of-mandatory-aslr/

3

Yeah, auto-update shouldn’t work then… I guess I’ll look into using a newer version of NSIS (but idk if there are updates for all the nsis plugins…)