

Windows Defender Antivirus detecting a virus It lets you scan files online with 70 antivirus engines for free. If you are concerned about the file, you can scan it with Virus Total online.

Instead the underlying technology uses cryptography to deal with public keys and private keys for encryption along with trusted authorities which are predefined on Windows 10. Microsoft Smartscreen does not use the internet so it won't ping Microsoft with what software you're installing. If it doesn't, then the Microsoft Smartscreen alert will come up. When you try to install software on Windows 10, it will check if the file has a digital certificate. However this costs money and it's not cheap but rather expensive, so free or open source software usually won't have one.įor example if someone on instant messenger like Discord or Skype was to give you a video game mod, software for creating images to be burnt on USB flash drives, or CD burning software, if that file has a digital certificate in it, then you can (virtually) guarantee that it hasn't got a virus inserted into it as a sneaky dual usage, otherwise known as a trojan.

It is the software developer's responsibility to ensure that their software has a digital certificate. msi files and more) to be digitally signed with a digital certificate, so that firstly the identity of the publisher of the file responsible for distributing it can be proven and secondly to prove that the file you possess has not been tampered with by a third party. In order to protect Windows users against viruses, Microsoft allows all programs (like. Are you sure that it found a virus inside the installer or that it was being risk averse for letting you know that the installer is alien and unknown to Microsoft (for not being signed with a digital certificate) ?
