Chrome Cleanup Tool

This directory contains the source code for the Chrome Cleanup Tool, a standalone application distributed to Chrome users to find and remove Unwanted Software (UwS).

The tool and its tests are Windows-only.

Integration with Chrome

The application is distributed in two versions:

  1. A Chrome component named the Software Reporter that finds UwS but does not have the ability to delete anything.
  2. A separate download named Chrome Cleanup Tool that both finds and removes UwS.

The Software Reporter runs in the background and, if it finds UwS that can be removed, reports this to Chrome. Chrome then downloads the full Cleanup Tool and shows a prompt on the settings page asking the user for permission to remove the UwS.

This directory contains the source for both.

Code in Chromium that deals with the Software Reporter Tool and Chrome Cleanup Tool includes:

Internal Resources

If |is_official_chrome_cleaner_build| is set in GN, the build looks for internal resources in the chrome_cleaner_internal/ directory. These resources are not open source so are only available internally to Google. They include the licensed scanning engine used to find real-world UwS.

Otherwise the build will link to the test scanning engine in chrome/chrome_cleaner/engines/target/test_engine_delegate.cc which only detects test files. This is the default when building on the Chromium buildbots.

To ship a non-test version of the tool, implement EngineDelegate to wrap an engine that can detect and remove UwS. The engine will be run inside a sandbox with low privileges. To perform operations like opening file handles, scanning process memory, and deleting files, the engine will need to call the callbacks passed to EngineDelegate as |privileged_file_calls|, |privileged_scan_calls| and |privileged_removal_calls|.

Status

Code complete. Some tests are still in the Google internal repository.

The unit tests (chrome_cleaner_unittests.exe) are built and executed on the Chromium buildbots. The final binaries (chrome_cleanup_tool.exe and software_reporter_tool.exe) are also built because chrome_cleaner_unittests has an artificial dependency on them, but nothing currently executes them.

TODO(crbug.com/949669): add an integration test that builds and runs the binaries, and remove the artificial dependency.

Contact

joenotcharles@google.com