Significance of EV Code Signing Certificates for Software and Application Security

In today’s digital era, software and applications have become an integral part of our daily lives, and so have increasing cybercrimes and threats, which cause harm to software and applications and adversely impact business brand and reputation. Thus, organizations must ensure that their software and applications are safe and secure from vulnerabilities like malware, phishing, and ransomware by implementing strong software security measures like digitally signing code with security certificates like code signing certificates.

What is Code Signing and Why is it Crucial for Software Security

Code signing is a process that involves adding a digital signature to the code of software, executables, or applications that verifies the authenticity and integrity of the signed code and ensures that it has not been tampered with or modified by any unknown user.

Code signing works by using a public key infrastructure (PKI) to generate a digital signature that is attached to the software code by means of a hashing algorithm. This digital signature contains information about the software, such as the publisher’s name, date of signing, and a unique identifier, thus making it trusted and legitimate for the user downloading the software to ensure that the software has not been tampered with and belongs to a verified source.

What are EV Code Signing Certificates and Benefits of Using Them

Code signing certificates are available in different forms, like Standard or Organization Validation (OV), Individual Validation (IV) and Extended Validation (EV) code signing certificates, each with unique features, security, and validation levels. Out of these types, the EV code signing certificate provides the highest level of security and authenticity and helps boost the reputation of publishing organizations in the global market by increasing downloads of the signed software and applications.

EV Code Signing Certificates are also robust in enhancing software security by securing the software code from malware and unauthorized alteration, as well as by displaying the publisher’s name, address, and other relevant information on the digital signature, assuring the software belongs to a trusted source that helps boost the publishing organization’s brand reputation. Any software or application digitally signed with an EV code signing certificate gets instant reputation by removing the Windows Defender or Microsoft SmartScreen filter warning to users when they try to download it on their system.

Moreover, EV code signing certificates also provide protection against malware and other malicious activities. If a user tries to download software that has been tampered with or modified, the digital signature attached to the software will not match the signature on the code signing certificate. This mismatch will alert the user that the software has been tampered with and is not legitimate.

How are EV Code Signing Certificates Different from other Code Signing Certificates

From among the categories of code signing certificates available that reputed certificate authorities offer, the highly popular Extended Validation (EV) differs from the Regular or OV code signing certificates in several ways.

Firstly, obtaining EV code signing certificates requires a more stringent verification process than regular Code Signing Certificates as per the guidelines set by the CA/B forum. This verification process involves verifying the identity of the publisher and the software’s integrity, ensuring that the software has not been tampered with or modified.

Also, compared to OV code signing, extended validation code signing certificates provide users with additional information about the publisher’s organization’s name, address, etc. for the software or application they are downloading. This information helps users identify the publisher of the software and verify its authenticity.

Moreover, EV code signing certificates are priced higher than regular ones and also have a longer time duration to get issued from Certificate Authorities (CAs) due to their strict vetting process.

How to Obtain an EV Code Signing Certificate

The process of obtaining and getting an EV Code Signing Certificate involves a strict validation or vetting process from the Certificate Authorities (CAs). This process involves the submission of several documents, such as government-issued identification, business registration documents, and other relevant information, to the CAs for validation of the identity of the publishing organization and that the organization is legitimate.

The validation process for issuing an EV code signing certificate is time-consuming and usually takes several days since the CA validates the publishing organization’s identity through verification of documents submitted by the organization, and upon satisfaction, only the requested EV code signing certificate gets issued to the publishing organization.

Also, as per the new CA/B Forum guidelines, hardware security modules, or HSM token devices, that comply with the Federal FIPS 140-2 standards are mandatory for every certificate authority to issue any code signing certificate, whether the regular one or the extended validated code signing certificate.

Hence, many globally reputed authorities have implemented HSM tokens for issuing code signing certificates, like YubiKey (a popular HSM device created by Yubico), which is used by the globally trusted CA Sectigo for issuing their code signing certificates. The new update in the code signing industry of integrating HSMs with the code signing process will help in strengthening data and information security by safeguarding certificate details, keys, and other data from being accessible to unauthorized persons as HSMs have strong physical properties that cannot be compromised by cyber criminals.

Best practices for using EV Code Signing Certificates

To ensure the best results when using EV Code Signing Certificates, publishers should follow some best practices, like:

1. Publishers should ensure that their software meets the EV Code Signing Certificate requirements by checking that the software is free from any malicious activities and that it has not been tampered with or modified.

2. It’s always recommended for publishing organizations to keep the code signing certificate details, including data and keys, safe and secure to avoid being accessible by unauthorized users.

3. Since all the code signing certificates have a limited period of validity, say 1 year or 3 years, publishing organizations must monitor the certificate expiry time frame and renew the certificate at a time before the expiry of the EV code signing certificate to avoid users getting a warning for software due to an invalid certificate.

Popular EV Code Signing Certificate Case Studies

Several case studies demonstrate the effectiveness of EV Code Signing Certificates in ensuring secure software and applications. For example, in 2017, the NotPetya ransomware attack came into the spotlight caused significant damage to several organizations worldwide. However, some organizations were able to prevent the malware from infecting their systems by using EV Code Signing Certificates. The EV Code Signing Certificates enabled these organizations to detect the malware and prevent it from infecting their systems.

Another case study involves the popular web browser, Mozilla Firefox. Mozilla Firefox uses an EV Code Signing Certificate to ensure that its users can download the browser safely and securely. The EV Code Signing Certificate provides users with additional information about the software, such as the publisher’s name and other relevant information.

Conclusion

To conclude, EV Code Signing Certificates are utmost crucial for ensuring stringent security for software and applications, maintaining code integrity, and enabling users to trust download the signed software on their systems which increases downloads thereby boosting the reputation of publishing organization in the market. Thus, software publishing organizations can rely on EV code signing certificates for strengthening their software security measures as a part of their IT security system.