Certificate authority for digitally signing software

[Curr93]

Hello dear colleagues

Would you be so kind to advice me any Certificate authority for digitally signing software developed in LabVIEW ?

[rolfk]

What is your specific question?

The fact that you are using LabVIEW is not really relevant in this context. The principle is always the same. You need a certificate from a globally trusted Certificate Authority. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_authority

They mostly concentrate on TLS website certificates as that is the bulk of requests they get, so you need to make sure that your certificate authority can issue you a Code Signing Certificate. This is a considerable expense if you are not in the business of creating software on a regular base. You have to expect to spend around $300 to $400 per year for such a certificate.

After you obtained such a certificate, you simply need to sign the LabVIEW created exe with the appropriate tool for the desired OS. On Windows this is usually the signtool.exe application. SignTool is available as part of the Windows SDK, which you can download from https://developer.microsoft.com/windows/downloads/windows-10-sdk/. It gets installed by the Windows SDK installer into C:\<Program Files>\Windows Kits\10\bin\10.0.19041.0\x64\signtool.exe.

Here you can find how to use Signtool.

[Curr93]

I heard that the LabVIEW only works with certain Certificate authority centers and did not know where to start. Thanks now I know

[Curr93]

Hello dear RolfK 

Thank you for your reply, but I'm still not sure which Authority center and its certificate is suitable for LabVIEW digital signature. Is it "IdenTrust" or "DigiCert" or "Sectigo" ?  The main question for me is whose specific certificate to buy.

[rolfk]

It has nothing to do with LabVIEW. The signtool.exe is a Microsoft tool to embed the certificate in the executable. You need a software signing certificate from a globally accepted certificate authority. I’m not in a position to give you specific advice which one you will be best served by.

There are basic Software signing ceetificates and so called EV which stands for extra verified where the authority somehow makes sure that you are the person or company asking for it. For simple signing you can go with a basic one but it means not as much but will work, to prevent a security alert.