Silentinstall

Overview

Executive Summary

Infection Vector and Technical Capabilities

• Hidden Execution (Command Line Switches): The wrapper extracts its payloads and executes them using Windows command-line switches (e.g., `/S`, `/silent`, `/quiet`). This forces the bundled adware and toolbars to install in the background without displaying any EULAs, progress bars, or opt-out checkboxes.
• Registry and Browser Hijacking: The silently installed adware immediately begins modifying registry keys to establish persistence and forcefully alters the default homepage and search engine of installed browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Edge) to route traffic through affiliate links.
• Evasion of UAC: Sophisticated variants may attempt to bypass Windows User Account Control (UAC) prompts to ensure the silent installations complete with administrative privileges.

Threat Assessment

Incident Response and Remediation

• Comprehensive System Scan: Standard antivirus often ignores PUPs. A dedicated enterprise anti-malware solution is required to scan the system and identify the dozens of potentially unwanted programs installed by the wrapper.
• Manual Uninstallation and Cleanup: IT staff must manually review the "Add/Remove Programs" list, uninstalling the unwanted toolbars and optimizers. Further cleanup of orphaned registry keys and Scheduled Tasks is usually necessary.
• Browser Factory Reset: To completely eradicate the browser hijacking components, all installed web browsers must undergo a full factory reset to purge hidden extensions and modified search settings.

Known aliases

Threat reports may refer to this family under multiple names:

• Adware.SilentInstall
• PUP.Installer
• Win32/Bundler

MITRE ATT&CK Techniques

This family has been observed using the following ATT&CK techniques: T1204.002 T1562.001

Generated Detections (Boilerplate)

These YARA and Sigma rules are auto-generated based on the family name and aliases. They must be heavily tuned before deployment in a production environment.

YARA Rule

rule MALWARE_WIN_SILENTINSTALL {
    meta:
        description = "Detects Silentinstall (advanced_threat)"
        author = "SystemHelpdesk Boilerplate Generator"
        date = "2026-07-06"
    strings:
        $s1 = "silentinstall" ascii wide nocase
        $s2 = "adware.silentinstall" ascii wide nocase
        $s3 = "pup.installer" ascii wide nocase
        $s4 = "win32/bundler" ascii wide nocase
    condition:
        uint16(0) == 0x5a4d and any of them
}

Sigma Rule

title: Suspicious Silentinstall Activity
id: 5fe93d899b42ac970fc50c3b545eccdf
status: experimental
description: Detects generic indicators of the silentinstall malware family.
logsource:
    category: process_creation
    product: windows
detection:
    selection:
        Image|endswith:
            - '\cmd.exe'
            - '\powershell.exe'
        CommandLine|contains:
            - "*silentinstall*"
            - "*adware.silentinstall*"
            - "*pup.installer*"
            - "*win32/bundler*"
    condition: selection
level: medium

References & External Analysis

• Search "silentinstall" on VirusTotal (External Analysis)

Frequently Asked Questions

Related Families (Category: advanced_threat)

Explore other malware families in the same category:

• Adspy
• Pcmedic
• Hakopsbot
• Extinstaller
• Oneclick

Machine-readable

Get this profile as JSON: https://jordan123234-malware-families-explorer.static.hf.space/api/silentinstall.json

Ecosystem & Interactive Environments

This profile is part of the Malware Families Catalog, a public dataset of 2,899 malware families. The catalog is also published across our ecosystem: Hugging Face, Kaggle, Zenodo, Replit, StackBlitz, CodeSandbox, and CodePen.