Question

I recently purchased an authenticode certificate from globalsign and am having problems signing my files for deployment. There are a couple of .exe files that are generated by a project and then put into a .msi. When I sign the .exe files with the signtool the certificate is valid and they run fine. The problem is that when I build the .msi (using the visual studio setup project) the .exe files lose their signatures. So I can sign the .msi after it is built, but the installed .exe files continue the whole “unknown publisher” business. How can I retain the signature on these files for installation on the client machine?

Answer 1

Visual Studio creates two folders at compile time: obj and bin. Turns out, at least in my case, the output will always be copied from the obj folder into the bin folder. I was signing the executables in the bin folder only to have them overwritten and then packaged into the msi. Signing the executables in the obj folder solved the problem.