I found a suspicious file on a Windows XP machine. I was able to trace its origin back to a Windows Installer package (.msi). This package in c:\windows\installer had an invalid digital signature. Like this:
Very suspicious.
A bit later I found another msi package containing the same suspicious file. But this time, the package had a valid digital signature. What’s going on?
After a deep dive into the internals of msi packages, I found the answer.
When an msi package is installed, it is cached inside the Windows Installer directory (%windir%\Installer). Prior to Windows Installer 5.0 (released with Windows 7), cached packages were stripped of their embedded cab files. But with digitally signed msi files, the signature remained inside the file: the digitally signed file was modified, hence the signature was invalidated. This behavior changed with Windows Installer 5.0: cached packages are no longer stripped, hence the signature remains valid.
This blogpost by Heath Stewart explains this change in more detail. Unfortunately, my Google-skills were not good enough to find this blogpost prior to my deep dive into msi files. Hindsight Googling FTW! 
