Question regarding Deprecation of Software Publisher Certificates?

@“Peter_Viscarola_(OSR)” said:
I wish Entrust would make it easier to buy a Code Signing Cert from them… OV would be sufficient for this purpose.
I hope somebody gets one of these, cross-signed, and posts the cert chain so we’ll all know for sure.

We are working on getting the Entrust EV. It will take a while, but as soon as I lay my hands on it, I’m going to check the chain (unless someone else manages to get it sooner).

@CaptainFlint

Thanks, Captain. We’ll be grateful for whatever info you can provide.

Peter

@CaptainFlint said:

@“Peter_Viscarola_(OSR)” said:
I wish Entrust would make it easier to buy a Code Signing Cert from them… OV would be sufficient for this purpose.
I hope somebody gets one of these, cross-signed, and posts the cert chain so we’ll all know for sure.

We are working on getting the Entrust EV. It will take a while, but as soon as I lay my hands on it, I’m going to check the chain (unless someone else manages to get it sooner).

Hi Flint,

Any update on that Entrust cert? did you get it? If so, can you please post the cert chain for us, so we can see if it in fact chains up to G2 CA?

You did see that MSFT said they would revoke the cert for anyone who used it after 1 July 2020 for cross-signing drivers for down level OS versions, right?

Not sayin’ this makes your question invalid… just wanted to be sure you saw MSFT’s most recent position on this.

Peter

@henrik_meida said:
Any update on that Entrust cert? did you get it? If so, can you please post the cert chain for us, so we can see if it in fact chains up to G2 CA?

Unfortunately we met with some difficulties during the company verification stage, which have never occurred before. My colleagues are still fighting it… :frowning:

@“Peter_Viscarola_(OSR)” said:
You did see that MSFT said they would revoke the cert for anyone who used it after 1 July 2020 for cross-signing drivers for down level OS versions, right?

Not sayin’ this makes your question invalid… just wanted to be sure you saw MSFT’s most recent position on this.

Peter

Yes i saw that, but we might have a shot at asking Microsoft for permission of cross signing with that cert only for supporting older operating systems like 7, i know its unlikely for them to accept but worth the shot. and we would obviously tell them why we can’t pass the WHQL test for some of our drivers.

@CaptainFlint said:

@henrik_meida said:
Any update on that Entrust cert? did you get it? If so, can you please post the cert chain for us, so we can see if it in fact chains up to G2 CA?

Unfortunately we met with some difficulties during the company verification stage, which have never occurred before. My colleagues are still fighting it… :frowning:

Would you mind telling us what exactly they did for verification? and what were these difficulties? I thought the EV verification process is pretty straight forward?!

@henrik_meida said:
Would you mind telling us what exactly they did for verification? and what were these difficulties? I thought the EV verification process is pretty straight forward?!

I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to disclose, it may be considered sensitive information. But basically, it now requires some third-party independent sources to confirm the information we provide. And some of the required data were not available via any of the sources, which the verification service considered trusted. So we are arranging legal confirmations that would satisfy Entrust, but it takes time.

@CaptainFlint said:

@henrik_meida said:
Would you mind telling us what exactly they did for verification? and what were these difficulties? I thought the EV verification process is pretty straight forward?!

I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to disclose, it may be considered sensitive information. But basically, it now requires some third-party independent sources to confirm the information we provide. And some of the required data were not available via any of the sources, which the verification service considered trusted. So we are arranging legal confirmations that would satisfy Entrust, but it takes time.

So I’m assuming you didn’t have a DUNS number, correct? because based on what i heard, having one will conclude the verification process.

We are in the process of getting one, and after that we’ll try Entrust. But please do update us when you finally got your certificate.

@henrik_meida said:
So I’m assuming you didn’t have a DUNS number, correct? because based on what i heard, having one will conclude the verification process.

No, it’s not the DUNS that caused problems. As I said, we have already been buying EV certificates before, and never had any issues.

But please do update us when you finally got your certificate.

I certainly will. :+1:

we might have a shot at asking Microsoft for permission of cross signing with that cert only for supporting older operating systems like 7

You might note that this is precisely the circumstance for which they are threatening to revoke your cert. not any other situation. I’ve personally advocated, asked, pleased, and explained. And the last reply I got was “see this new section of this document”… which was the threat to revoke the cert.

They’re not going to help us. Period. Full stop.

Peter

@“Peter_Viscarola_(OSR)” said:

we might have a shot at asking Microsoft for permission of cross signing with that cert only for supporting older operating systems like 7

You might note that this is precisely the circumstance for which they are threatening to revoke your cert. not any other situation. I’ve personally advocated, asked, pleased, and explained. And the last reply I got was “see this new section of this document”… which was the threat to revoke the cert.

They’re not going to help us. Period. Full stop.

Peter

Well we know that it will likely not work, but still worth the shot.

@CaptainFlint said:

@henrik_meida said:
So I’m assuming you didn’t have a DUNS number, correct? because based on what i heard, having one will conclude the verification process.

No, it’s not the DUNS that caused problems. As I said, we have already been buying EV certificates before, and never had any issues.

But please do update us when you finally got your certificate.

I certainly will. :+1:

One thing i forgot to ask, do you think that if we get a DUNs number that will count as our verification, and basically complete the whole verification process with Entrust? because currently we are in the process of getting one, and we are not sure if we should wait until we get it, then proceed with the purchase or not, any thoughts ?

@henrik_meida said:
One thing i forgot to ask, do you think that if we get a DUNs number that will count as our verification, and basically complete the whole verification process with Entrust? because currently we are in the process of getting one, and we are not sure if we should wait until we get it, then proceed with the purchase or not, any thoughts ?

Unfortunately, I don’t know all the details, I’ve caught just a few glimpses. I’m not been involved in the process of either buying the certificate, or verifying the company. My taks is a purely technical one, to make certain our tools work with the certificate when we finally get it.

I recommend you contact Entrust and check with them. From what I’ve seen in our internal emails, they are quite helpful.

Having just gone through this with entrust, all I needed was 1) a
registered corporation of any sort (e.g. a LLC) 2) a registered domain that
could be verified as owned by said LLC.

Mark Roddy

@Tim_Roberts said:
EV is only a requirement for creating a Hardware Dashboard account.

Are you saying if one has a dashboard account there is no need to buy EV certs anymore because one can submit drivers for attestation using just a cheap, easy to get code signing certificate from then on? Are you absolutely certain of this?

@Rourke said:
Are you saying if one has a dashboard account there is no need to buy EV certs anymore because one can submit drivers for attestation using just a cheap, easy to get code signing certificate from then on? Are you absolutely certain of this?

You need to have an active EV certificate to keep using the dashboard services. As soon as it expires, you are automatically blocked from sending any submissions, until you attach a new active EV certificate to your account.

I’m not sure if you can use any other certificate for signing your submission packages (I know you can do it for drivers). But even if you can, it’s just a question of convenience (hardware EV token versus PFX files). You cannot save money/effort on that.

Yes, you need a current EV cert to maintain the dashboard account, as CaptainFlint said. You can use ANY certificate to sign your submissions, as long as you have registered the certificate with the dashboard account.

@Mark_Roddy said:
Having just gone through this with entrust, all I needed was 1) a
registered corporation of any sort (e.g. a LLC) 2) a registered domain that
could be verified as owned by said LLC.

Mark Roddy

Hi Mark, thank you for sharing,

I have two questions and would be grateful if you can answer :

  1. Can you post the cert chain for us when you cross sign a driver with it, so we can see if it in fact chains up to G2 CA (that expires beyond 2022) ? or can you check it yourself and let us know ? (signtool verify /v /kp <mydriver.sys>)

  2. What documents with regards to our company/employees do we need to prepare to send Entrust? we first wanted to get a DUNs number before purchasing the EV but that is too complicated by its own so i think we might go for it before getting A DUNs. The problem is that our company doesn’t have a Online present right now (No website or anything), do you think we need to prepare a website and a mail server using our own domain and send them the email with our own domain instead of using gmail for example?

@henrik_meida Haven’t we had this discussion before? Talk with the CA They are the only ones who can definitively tell you what they’ll accept.

Peter

OK, finally we’ve managed to get the new certificate. As promised, here are the details.

First, I was mightily surprised to see that they sent us the cert not on a token, but as a set of private/public key files. I thought EV was supposed to run only from a non-exportable token. Apparently, there is no such requirement. (And, yes, according to the certificate policy OIDs 2.23.140.1.3 and 2.16.840.1.114028.10.1.2, this is an EV; and it was accepted by the MS Dashboard, although I have not sent any submission yet.)

Second, and more important, the cross-certificate is, indeed, valid and active till 2025. They even attached this cross-certificate file in the archive they’ve sent us, and it’s completely identical to the one we can download from the MS site. I’ve tried signing some PNP driver and its catalog file, and installed it into Windows 7. Upon installation I’ve got a red warning about an untrusted signature (apparently, because Entrust wasn’t present in my root CA storage), but after confirming, installation finished successfully, and the driver was loaded by the kernel. Just in case, I also tried signing the driver+CAT without a cross-certificate, and, as expected, the kernel refused to load the driver.

Here is the output of signtool verify /kp /v driver.sys (I edited out our company name and the leaf certificate’s thumbprint):

! ! Signing Certificate Chain: ! Issued to: Entrust Root Certification Authority - G2 ! Issued by: Entrust Root Certification Authority - G2 ! Expires: Sat Dec 07 20:55:54 2030 ! SHA1 hash: 8CF427FD790C3AD166068DE81E57EFBB932272D4 ! ! Issued to: Entrust Extended Validation Code Signing CA - EVCS1 ! Issued by: Entrust Root Certification Authority - G2 ! Expires: Sun Nov 10 17:12:49 2030 ! SHA1 hash: 64B8F1EDEF40D7D28602B6B9171AFF114E12A646 ! ! Issued to: [COMPANY NAME REDACTED] ! Issued by: Entrust Extended Validation Code Signing CA - EVCS1 ! Expires: Tue Apr 23 19:07:18 2024 ! SHA1 hash: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX ! ! The signature is timestamped: Fri Apr 23 21:11:05 2021 ! Timestamp Verified by: ! Issued to: DigiCert Assured ID Root CA ! Issued by: DigiCert Assured ID Root CA ! Expires: Mon Nov 10 03:00:00 2031 ! SHA1 hash: 0563B8630D62D75ABBC8AB1E4BDFB5A899B24D43 ! ! Issued to: DigiCert SHA2 Assured ID Timestamping CA ! Issued by: DigiCert Assured ID Root CA ! Expires: Tue Jan 07 15:00:00 2031 ! SHA1 hash: 3BA63A6E4841355772DEBEF9CDCF4D5AF353A297 ! ! Issued to: DigiCert Timestamp 2021 ! Issued by: DigiCert SHA2 Assured ID Timestamping CA ! Expires: Mon Jan 06 03:00:00 2031 ! SHA1 hash: E1D782A8E191BEEF6BCA1691B5AAB494A6249BF3 ! ! Cross Certificate Chain: ! Issued to: Microsoft Code Verification Root ! Issued by: Microsoft Code Verification Root ! Expires: Sat Nov 01 16:54:03 2025 ! SHA1 hash: 8FBE4D070EF8AB1BCCAF2A9D5CCAE7282A2C66B3 ! ! Issued to: Entrust Root Certification Authority - G2 ! Issued by: Microsoft Code Verification Root ! Expires: Mon Jul 07 23:55:49 2025 ! SHA1 hash: D8FC248748585E173EFBFB3075C4B4D60F9D8D08 ! ! Issued to: Entrust Extended Validation Code Signing CA - EVCS1 ! Issued by: Entrust Root Certification Authority - G2 ! Expires: Sun Nov 10 17:12:49 2030 ! SHA1 hash: 64B8F1EDEF40D7D28602B6B9171AFF114E12A646 ! ! Issued to: [COMPANY NAME REDACTED] ! Issued by: Entrust Extended Validation Code Signing CA - EVCS1 ! Expires: Tue Apr 23 19:07:18 2024 ! SHA1 hash: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX !

Of course, by now we know that we cannot use cross-signing after July 1 for public distribution, and that there have been found a few interesting workarounds for loading drivers in the older systems. But still it’s good to know that Entrust certificate works fine. At the very least it gives us a couple more months of standard cross-signing.