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Re: Should cygwin's setup*.exe be signed using Sign Tool?
- From: Jon TURNEY <jon dot turney at dronecode dot org dot uk>
- To: cygwin at cygwin dot com
- Cc: dwheeler at dwheeler dot com
- Date: Thu, 09 Apr 2015 14:05:39 +0100
- Subject: Re: Should cygwin's setup*.exe be signed using Sign Tool?
- Authentication-results: sourceware.org; auth=none
- References: <E1Ydjc5-0000kv-WD at rmm6prod02 dot runbox dot com>
- Reply-to: cygwin at cygwin dot com
On 02/04/2015 19:13, David A. Wheeler wrote:
Running setup*.exe produces "Publisher: Unknown publisher", and it's doubtful that many people check the signature of the .exe file before running. Even if they did, there's the problem that the signature comes from the same place.
Has Cygwin considered signing the installer using Sign Tool? More info:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa387764%28v=vs.85%29.aspx
http://blog.didierstevens.com/2008/12/31/howto-add-a-digital-signature-to-executables/
I believe signing it this way would eliminate the "unknown publisher"; it would also protect the many people who don't follow the current signature-checking process. This would create a strong barrier against code subversion after release.
The signed executable could also be signed using the current process, so you don't need to *eliminate* any capability. I can't provide a patch to do this, obviously :-).
I don't think this is obvious at all. You can't provide the
certificate, but you can provide a patch.
However, saying "install Windows SDK, use signtool" is not a solution,
for reasons already discussed.
The actual work that needs to be done here is to identify an alternative
open source signing tool and how to use it.
It would be nice to have such a tool packaged for cygwin, as that would
allow people to sign any MinGW-w64 executables they make...
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