Hiding Files in Windows

Question

Hello,

Currently, I'm developing a system which will extract some files from an SFX archive (files that will be used for another app). I want to make the extracted files hidden, so the person which has find the location of the exe couldn't get the files which will be in same directory with the exe. I know i can apply attrib +h to the files but if the user turns on "show hidden and system files" option in Windows, the files will be visible.

Isn't there any method to overcome this? Any suggestion is welcomed.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Guess you could play around with user rights. However, you'd need to ask an administrator right at install then to make it hidden from the given user who is an admin on the PC.

Answer 2

If you're writing to the disk, a user can find and read your file. There's no way around that, one could monitor what happens when your application is run, find what files it's writing to, or just intercept while it's being written. Consider why you don't want the user to find your files.

Is it because there's sensitive data, or things you'd rather they didn't change? Consider encrypting it, or verifying it's integrity with a checksum or hash.