Archive: Q: XP sp2 and Author unknown
Q: XP sp2 and Author unknown
Hello,
I've just installed XP sp2.
When I download an exe using explorer and I execute it I have a warning windows with
Author unknown (this is my translation by a language that is not English).
Is there a possibility to set the executable (with NSIS) so that the
Author is known?
Fabrizio
You probably need to sign it. But you need a certificate for this.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/s...de/signing.asp
Slashdot had an article about free certificates:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?s...tid=172&tid=95
http://www.cacert.org/
Are you sure?
A generic cerfiticate or aMS certificate?
Fabrizio
No, I'm not sure. The first link contains detailed instructions, it shouldn't hard to test. Let me know what the results are.
If you really want to get rid of that warning, you will need to sign your app. You can download the "signtool" from microsoft, but you will also need a certificate. Your certificate must be issued by a CA (certificate authority) that IE trusts. Here are links to a couple of them.
http://www.thawte.com/codesign/index.html
http://www.verisign.com/products-ser...ing/index.html
Off hand I don't know of any that hand these out for free.
There is a way to create your own certificate using openssl, but you will also need to create your own CA, and this CA information (root certificate) will have to be imported into IE of the machine that will be doing the downloading. This method is not good for software posted on the web, but works good for internal corporate environments where you can control the end users PC somewhat.
Oh yeah I looked at that www.cacert.org site. They do give out certificates, but their certificates are not trusted by IE by default. So you have the same problem in this case as generating your own.