Difference between revisions of "Signing Kiwix"

In most OS nowadays, signed software are the standard and non-signed ones are flagged as insecure.

It is important that Kiwix signs its binaries so that beginners (one of our main targets) feel safe when using Kiwix.

It is important to note that signing software doesn't bring much more security. Still it brings to information to the user:

# The software being executed has been produced by the entity who signed it. In our case, user will know that this version of Kiwix has been made by Kiwix developers and not someone else.

# The software being executed has not been altered. It is the released version.

How to sign packages vary depending on the target system.

In OSX, starting with version 10.7, not signing an application results in a big warning when the software is launched. It completely prevents the user to open it unless he does one of the following:

Windows is a little more permissive than OSX. In Windows, the default behavior is to display a warning dialog asking the user if he really wants to launch an unknown software.

In Windows, most of the time, only the installer is signed because every action conducted by a signed binary inherits its ''authorization''.

For Kiwix, we will still need to sign both the installer and ''kiwix.exe'' since we also use ''kiwix.exe'' directly in Live/Portable mode. Should we want to have an additional program for autorun or else, we would have to sign it too.