Where to find the latest digitally signed Synaptics touchpad driver?

In the past, Synaptics provided their touchpad drivers in a digitally-signed self-extracting executable. For example, here is an older version of the driver hosted on the official Synaptics website, that is provided in a digitally-signed self-extracting executable:

http://drivers.synaptics.com/Synaptics_v15_2_20_C_XP64_Vista64_Win7-64_Signed_Marketing_SGS94_UI-Scrybe.exe

However, the link on their website for the latest version of the driver currently points to an unsigned ZIP archive.

Where can I find the digitally-signed self-extracting executable for the latest version of the Synaptics touchpad driver?

Or, if they've stopped providing their newest drivers in a digitally-signed self-extracting executable, what's the most recent version of the driver that was provided in a digitally-signed self-extracting executable?

OS: Windows
Kernel: NT 6.2
Arch: x86_64

root

Posted 13 years ago

Reputation: 71

Answers

It is still secure. Extract the zip and open syntp.cat in the WinWDF\x64 folder. That is the digitally signed "Security Catalog" file. That file contains the signature for all files (both containing a sigiture in itself (like DLL's) and non-singable files (like the .wmv files))

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The signed installer that is included in that folder uses that syntp.cat file to verify that the files it is installing to your computer are the files it expects to see and no extra or missing files exist.

Scott Chamberlain

Posted 13 years ago

Reputation: 29 556

4This .cat file does not appear to be present in the v17.0.19 version of the drivers. – hgcrpd – 12 years ago

Its' not a problem with security or whether the file is signed or not. Windows 8 doesn't seem to think that the drivers are signed and without disabling DSE, it will not install the latest drivers provided on Synaptics website. Even though, it clearly states support for Windows 8.

However the other link provided by @root, installed on my Windows 8 Pro successfully. I was running the OEM synaptics driver that came with my dell and that was giving me problems with scrolling in Windows etc.. The generic synaptics driver ver 15 works great. Thanks for the link

Also, I couldn't find the syntp.cat file in the folder.

xlordvader

Posted 13 years ago

Reputation: 63

http://www.synaptics.com/resources/drivers

The link supplied to the latest drivers- It is a digitally signed, self-executing file. The only difference between the two is the newer driver's executable is inside a zip file. This is fairly common these days given the growing size of assembly packages.

Josh Campbell

Posted 13 years ago

Reputation: 792

The ZIP archive contains multiple files; some are signed, some are not. The integrity of the unsigned files cannot be verified. – root – 13 years ago

@root I can certainly understand your concern regarding the integrity of zip files. I applaud your use of security awareness. That being said, there are a few things for you to consider: (1) As I stated before, Downloadable drivers in .zip format is the norm, so you will have to make peace with this eventually. (2)The .zip is coming from a trusted source. Synaptic's is not going to keep malicious drivers on their server for their customers to download.(3) You can easily run a virus scan on the zip before opening it.(4)The executable is digitally signed. I hope this helps. – Josh Campbell – 13 years ago

@root - It certainly is possible to verify the integrity of the unsigned files. The zip archive does allows you to do this. If the files were not the exact same files posted by Synaptics the archive would fail to extract. – Ramhound – 13 years ago

3Actually the issue is not that the drivers may be unsafe, it's that Windows 8 apparently does not allow you to install the drivers unless they are signed. I've tried running the setup files and also manually selecting the driver in the device manager, but it reports that install fails in both cases. – hgcrpd – 12 years ago