Signing a Windows EXE file

You can try using Microsoft's Sign Tool

You download it as part of the Windows SDK for Windows Server 2008 and .NET 3.5. Once downloaded you can use it from the command line like so:

signtool sign /a MyFile.exe

This signs a single executable, using the "best certificate" available. (If you have no certificate, it will show a SignTool error message.)

Or you can try:

signtool signwizard

This will launch a wizard that will walk you through signing your application. (This option is not available after Windows SDK 7.0.)

If you'd like to get a hold of certificate that you can use to test your process of signing the executable you can use the .NET tool Makecert.

Certificate Creation Tool (Makecert.exe)

Once you've created your own certificate and have used it to sign your executable, you'll need to manually add it as a Trusted Root CA for your machine in order for UAC to tell the user running it that it's from a trusted source. Important. Installing a certificate as ROOT CA will endanger your users privacy. Look what happened with DELL. You can find more information for accomplishing this both in code and through Windows in:

• Stack Overflow question Install certificates in to the Windows Local user certificate store in C#

• Installing a Self-Signed Certificate as a Trusted Root CA in Windows Vista

Hopefully that provides some more information for anyone attempting to do this!

I had the same scenario in my job and here are our findings

The first thing you have to do is get the certificate and install it on your computer, you can either buy one from a Certificate Authority or generate one using makecert.

Here are the pros and cons of the 2 options

Buy a certificate

• Pros
  • Using a certificate issued by a CA(Certificate Authority) willensure that Windows will not warn the end user about an applicationfrom an "unknown publisher" on any Computer using the certificatefrom the CA (OS normally comes with the root certificates from mannyCA's)
• Cons:

  • There is a cost involved on getting a certificate from a CA

    For prices, see https://cheapsslsecurity.com/sslproducts/codesigningcertificate.html and https://www.digicert.com/code-signing/

Generate a certificate using Makecert

• Pros:
  • The steps are easy and you can share the certificate with the end users
• Cons:
  • End users will have to manually install the certificate on their machines and depending on your clients that might not be an option
  • Certificates generated with makecert are normally used for development and testing, not production

Sign the executable file

There are two ways of signing the file you want:

• Using a certificate installed on the computer

  signtool.exe sign /a /s MY /sha1 sha1_thumbprint_value /t http://timestamp.verisign.com/scripts/timstamp.dll /v "C:\filename.dll"

  • In this example we are using a certificate stored on the Personal folder with a SHA1 thumbprint (This thumbprint comes from the certificate) to sign the file located at C:\filename.dll

• Using a certificate file

  signtool sign /tr http://timestamp.digicert.com /td sha256 /fd sha256 /f "c:\path\to\mycert.pfx" /p pfxpassword "c:\path\to\file.exe"

  • In this example we are using the certificate c:\path\to\mycert.pfx with the password pfxpassword to sign the file c:\path\to\file.exe

Test Your Signature

• Method 1: Using signtool

  Go to: Start > Run
  Type CMD > click OK
  At the command prompt, enter the directory where signtool exists
  Run the following:

  signtool.exe verify /pa /v "C:\filename.dll"

• Method 2: Using Windows

  Right-click the signed file
  Select Properties
  Select the Digital Signatures tab. The signature will be displayed in the Signature list section.

I hope this could help you

Sources:

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/internet-explorer/ie-developer/platform-apis/ms537361(v=vs.85)

• https://www.digicert.com/kb/code-signing/signcode-signtool-command-line.htm

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/seccrypto/makecert

You can get a free cheap code signing certificate from Certum if you're doing open source development.

I've been using their certificate for over a year, and it does get rid of the unknown publisher message from Windows.

As far as signing code I use signtool.exe from a script like this:

signtool.exe sign /t http://timestamp.verisign.com/scripts/timstamp.dll /f "MyCert.pfx" /p MyPassword /d SignedFile.exe SignedFile.exe