How to install self signed certificate while installing setup.exe

Question

I have created my own certificate using Makecert and signed my exe using Signtool and verified.But still it shows Unknown Publisher security warning. Then I have tried to install certificate using Installer class.But certificate installed after Unknown publisher warning popup. Is there any way to solved this issue?

Answer 1

Certificates are based on a chain of trust. The operating system provider, and/or network admins etc, decide who they trust to provide ongoing trust to other people (such as yourself), and allow the provider's certificates to be installed in the root of the OS.

If you can convince the people who own the computer to trust you and your self-signed certificate, you can of course supply it to them so they can install it themselves, at which point you can carry on.

If not, you need to go one of the certificate providers that they already implicitly trust, as the OS provider/network admin/machine owner/whoever already has their root certs installed. The provider will go through a process to verify you are who you say you are (which is why it costs money), at which point they will issue you with a certificate (based on a chain where a certificate further up the chain is on the target machine) with which you can sign your code. You won't need to install this on the end-users machine.

If it were possible for your installer to install your self-signed certificate before this dialog launches without some other administrator level access, it would render the entire process worthless, as anyone could pretend to be anyone else.