Best Code Signing Practices to Improve Software Security

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In today’s digital world, where cyber-attacks are becoming increasingly common and sophisticated, it’s essential to take proactive steps to ensure software security. One key strategy for safeguarding your software is code signing, which is the practice of adding a digital signature to your code to verify its authenticity and integrity. By implementing code signing techniques, you can help prevent unauthorized modifications, ensure that your software hasn’t been tampered with, and provide your users with greater confidence in your product.

However, not all code signing practices are created equal, and there are some common pitfalls to avoid. Hence, let us discuss some of the best and most proven code signing practices that help you strengthen the security of your software and applications.

Code Signing and its Fundamental Overview

Code Signing is the process of adding a digital signature to your code to verify its authenticity and integrity through a code signing certificate that uses a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) to create a unique signature for each piece of code, that can be verified by anyone who downloads the software. This helps prevent unauthorized code tampering or software modifications.

Code signing is a crucial security technique for developers for several reasons, such as securing the software code from being tampered with or altered by cyber attackers, ensuring code integrity, validating the developer’s or publisher’s identity as a legitimate source, Builds user trust by removing the Unknown Publisher Warning, SmartScreen and other system alerts for users, ensuring safe downloads, adding a time-stamped digital signature, and increasing brand reputation in the market by boosting downloads for signed software.

Best Code Signing Practices for Software Development

There are several best practices to follow when it comes to code signing that help strengthen software security. Let’s learn about some of the best and most vital code signing practices that developers may consider following for their process.

1.  Obtain your code signing certificate from a trusted Certificate Authority (CA) like Comodo, Sectigo, etc., by which your certificate would be trusted by all major browsers and operating systems due to the good reputation of the CA.

2.  It is always recommended to sign your code with a unique certificate for each release, along with a strong hashing algorithm that helps to prevent unauthorized modifications and makes it easier to track down any potential issues that may arise. Some recommended hashing algorithms include SHA-256 and SHA-512.

3.  Follow the “Time Stamping” technique, which proves the authenticity of the code and verifies the developer as a trusted source by keeping the digital signature valid even after the code signing certificate gets expired.

4.  Choose the right type of code signing certificate as per your business requirement since there are different types of code signing certificates providing unique security levels and suitable for various users as per their validation requirements for getting issued from CA.

Individual Code Signing Certificates are suitable for solo developers, and Standard Code Signing Certificates are for small to medium-sized development organizations providing standard encryption and have a simple validation process for verification of the certificate requesting entity. On the other hand, Extended Validation (EV) Code Signing Certificates ensure normal encryption plus an additional level of security and have a strict validation process for issuance from CA that involves verifying the legal identity and physical location of the certificate holder. Thus, EV code signing certificates are usually suited for large software organizations.

5.  Code signing requirements can vary depending on the platform on which you are developing your software and applications. It is important to research the specific requirements for each platform you are targeting by consulting documentation or reaching out to the platform’s developer community for guidance to ensure the code signing certificate is compatible with your development platform, like the Windows Code Signing Certificate for a Windows-based development platform.

6.  After you obtain your code signing certificate, you must incorporate code signing into your software development process within a reasonable time frame to ensure that all code is properly signed prior to release, identify any vulnerable issues, and address them in a timely manner before they may be exploited by cyber attackers.

7.  There are several code signing tools and services available to help simplify the code signing process. These tools can help you obtain a code signing certificate, sign your code, and verify your signatures. Some popular code signing tools and services include SignTool from popular authorities like DigiCert, and Sectigo etc.

Conclusion

A code signing certificate is an essential security tool for protecting your software from cyberattacks. By following and incorporating these best practices for code signing into your software development process, you can ensure that your software is authentic, secure, and trusted by your users and help you to solidify your developer reputation in the market.

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