Digital Signatures

[Montana DOJ Help Desk]

Word 2000

I have a VBA project that needs to have a digital signature. We just use
SelfCert to generate our signature because we only have a few in-house
projects that need to be signed. Sometimes we lose the digital signature
because of machine upgrades, or restoring an old image to the drive. That
kind of thing is rare, but it does happen, so I'm trying to come up with the
simplest way of restoring the digital signature (for the benefit of less
sophisticated users).

I tried exporting the certificate to a file so that it can be copied back to
the machine, and I tried copying off the store that holds the certificate.
But I have not found a way to restore them to a machine and have it work.
The more I think about it, the more this makes sense, as it would seem to be
a security risk if there actually was a way to do this.

Nonetheless, I'm wondering if there is a way to do what I want, or is it
generally easier to just create a new certificate?

--Tom

 

[Word Heretic]

G'day "Montana DOJ Help Desk" <[email protected]>,

STOP!!!!


NEVER EVER RESTORE A SELFCERT CERTIFCATE.

(its based on machine ids etc that change at the drop of a hat and if
your system gets in the slightest bit confused as to the validity...
BANG!)

Generate a new one and start using it. If it is REALLY that important
to have a long expiry on the one certifcate, you really need to look
at a validated certificate (Verisign being the most common and WAY
EXPENSIVE option)

Steve Hudson - Word Heretic
Want a hyperlinked index? S/W R&D? See WordHeretic.com

steve from wordheretic.com (Email replies require payment)


Montana DOJ Help Desk reckoned:

 

[Montana DOJ Help Desk]

Thanks for the reply.

I had kind of come to that conclusion myself, just knowing how other
security type stuff works, so I figured that it was specific to the machine.
The fact that I was pretty much able to restore everything (the certificate
store, import into Personal and the Trusted Root Certification Authorities,
and restore registry entries) and it STILL didn't work, pretty much sealed
it for me.

I know that getting a validated certificate is pricey, which is why we do
the SelfCert! Just out of curiosity, though, how pricey are we
talking?

Also, these macros need to be used on two different machines. Do I need to
generate a certificate for both machines?

--Tom

 

[Word Heretic]

G'day "Montana DOJ Help Desk" <[email protected]>,

I think it was Jonathon West who advised my of a mob that do it for
US$50 for a 3 year cert (very hazy mem on this). Now that is quite
reasonable.


Steve Hudson - Word Heretic
Want a hyperlinked index? S/W R&D? See WordHeretic.com

steve from wordheretic.com (Email replies require payment)


Montana DOJ Help Desk reckoned: