Live data from Hacker News

The Windows installer of ImageMagick will no longer be signed

github.com

261–270 of 364 posts

Re: The Windows installer of ImageMagick will no longer be signed

#261

I recently went through this same issue at my company - only found out about the change in requirements when I couldn't renew my cert at the previous provider. There is surprisingly little info available on how to do code signing for Windows now. I don't want to use a physical device - with fully remote teams it's not feasible. Eventually settled on Azure KeyVault with Digicert (I don't like Comodo aka Sectigo). Ther…

> Eventually settled on Azure KeyVault with Digicert

Somewhere at Microsoft two sales guys are high-fiving each other upon reading this comment. Mission. Fucking. Accomplished.

Re: The Windows installer of ImageMagick will no longer be signed

#262

Let's normalise using WSL for all such command-line utilities. Everyone's life will be easier, from developrs to users.

Let's not. Let's normalize using proper operating systems for software development and let these gate keepers to hardware that you own find out what unemployment is like.

Re: The Windows installer of ImageMagick will no longer be signed

#265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered volunteering to pay for and run the signing infrastructure?

There's a better way to see this: once can make a statement about the principle of the necessity of having transactions to exchange value, but not have a particular demand for the offered good or service themselves. I think that's what's going on here, so it might be better to keep these seeming "gotcha" type questions, which are irrelevant, either out of the discussion, or at least remember how they are misplaced! :…

Mine wasn’t a “gotcha” question. If the poster’s answer is “no” (i.e. that they don’t want to pay for or run such a system), then maybe they should consider that the same applies to everyone else.

Re: The Windows installer of ImageMagick will no longer be signed

#266

Let's normalise using WSL for all such command-line utilities. Everyone's life will be easier, from developrs to users.

WSL is only tenable if you only use your computer for development.

Trying to use a windows computer for gaming or media production with WSL installed is problematic. For example… opening file explorer causes WSL to start and file explorer is frozen until it launches. And WSL seems to constantly be running eating up 8gb of RAM.

Unless you need a GPU, codespaces are way more convenient than WSL.

Re: The Windows installer of ImageMagick will no longer be signed

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do we let any random application open its own files and folders at will? The actual selection and opening of files and other resources should be the job of the operating system This is how macOS works these days with sandboxing. Unless you manually go into system settings to grant "full disk access", apps only get access to files the user has manually selected (through the system open dialog, drag and drop, dou…

Yeah I don't really understand the push back on the way they're handling it. I actually think zero trust to access the filesystem without explicit confirmation is a good thing.

My favorite consequence of this is that running "find ~" now blocks on many GUI dialogs. Apple is sending a "we don't care about developers/power users" message very loudly.

Re: The Windows installer of ImageMagick will no longer be signed

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is obvious. Like saying the "sun is yellow because it is about 4.5 billion years old." Even if sandboxing was thought about back when Linus was porting Unix, it would have been extremely slow as processors and ram was very limited back then. If we could go back in time and give them ridiculously fast processors and effectively unlimited ram like we have today, I'm sure Linux and Windows (er, DOS) would look quit…

Performance has absolutely nothing to do with sandboxing. Heck you could already apply many sandboxing techniques with Linux 0.x by chroot() to an empty directory followed by setuid() to "nobody". If that process needs file access, fork() a broker process before the chroot() that funnels file descriptors over an unix socket to the sandboxed process. The broker strictly checks file access permissions of course or coul…

> Performance has absolutely nothing to do with sand boxing.

Even simple optimizations like shared caches fall afoul of proper isolation. In the past browser caches could be abused to find out if a user frequented specific sites just by checking how long it would take to request a site specific resource. Result: no more shared caching, all resources had to be loaded for each site separately.

Re: The Windows installer of ImageMagick will no longer be signed

#269
post #247

I've been through hell and back on both Windows and MacOS with application signing. It's only getting worse. First thing I have to note is that this really makes me want to offer anything as a web app. The browser offers a much better experience in so many ways and security is a well thought out integrated experience unlike these 25 year old operating systems bolting security on as an after thought. Clearly no one at…

Wouldn’t this be a liability though? In this scenario are you just blindly signing whatever? If yes, that’s obviously not good. The alternative is you have a long review and audit process but in the event something falls through the cracks, this still bites you.

I would be happy to pay for the service. It wouldn't be just the cost of the certificate. It would be the months of labor spent fighting the operating systems and their intricacies. This feels like knowledge that could be managed at scale much better than me doing it in isolation. The cost to me is much greater than just the cost of the certificate, though it's an issue for open source work. And I would be so happy to subsidize that work through a reputable service that was consistent and did that fighting for me.

Re: The Windows installer of ImageMagick will no longer be signed

#270
I had the same problem and ended up buying Certum Open Source set for 69 EUR: https://shop.certum.eu/open-source-code-signing.html

The set does include hardware token for storing the private key as well as a certificate valid for one year. Renewal is 25 EUR.

It does require verifying identity with government issued ID though. I haven't seen anything cheaper on the market (happy to hear suggestions).

Post reply on HN