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Code signing: what changed

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11Every piece of code may contain viruses, spyware, trojan horses, backdoors, rootkits, keyloggers and other kinds of malware. The risk has dramatically increased with the advent of wide-area networks like the internet, where it is easy to download programs of unknown or unverified origin.
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33One measure to reduce the effects of malicious code is that some modern operating systems require executables and scripts that have been downloaded from the internet to be signed with a developer's certificate. Code signing confirms the identity of the software author and guarantees that the code has not been altered or corrupted since it was signed by use of a cryptographic hash. Therefore, it ensures both authenticity and integrity of the executables.
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5-<img src="codesigning.png" title="Overview of code-signing a program written with Lazarus and Free Pascal" width="600" />
5+![](/wiki-images/1/15/Codesigning.png)
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77Code signing is required in [[Portal:iOS|iOS]] and modern versions of [[Portal:Mac|macOS]]. Microsoft implements for [[Portal:Windows|Windows]] a form of code signing based on Authenticode to include information about developers and their code with their programs through the use of digital signatures.
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99## See also
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1111- [[Code Signing for Windows]]
1212- [[Code Signing for macOS]]
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1515*From the Free Pascal wiki, page "Code signing", as it stood on 2021-02-12 after a change by Skalogryz, out of the wiki's dump of 2024-05-26. Copyright stays with the author who wrote it, according to the old wiki's [[Licensing]] page. If you have concerns about this material, [message the admin](/wiki-contact).*

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