What is a Software Publisher Certificate & How It Protects Your Code?

As more users recognize the risks of tampered and malicious software, maintaining software integrity and security is more critical than ever. Users tend to avoid downloading software which comes from an unknown source and lacks a proper digital signature. This is where a Software Publisher Certificate, also called as Code Signing Certificate comes into play. It acts as a digital identity of authenticity which assures that the software being downloaded is legitimate and has not been altered by malicious actors. But what exactly is Software Publisher Certificate, how does it work, and why is it important for software developers? Let’s break it down What is a Software Publisher Certificate & How Does It Work? A Software Publisher Certificate is an X.509 certificate used by software publishers to sign the software so that the distributed software remains unchanged from its original version. Hence, it is often also referred as a code signing certificate or a software signing certificate. Issued by a trusted Certificate Authority, the SPC is used in the code-signing process that adds a cryptographic signature to the software’s executable files. How Software Publisher Certificate Works: Key Pair Generation and Secure Storage You need to generate a pair of cryptographic […]