digital signatures on executables

[Andrew Marlow]

Hello everyone,

I am new to this mailing list so please pardon my ignorance; I don't even
know if this is the right place to discuss the issue I have in mind.

I would very much like to see GNU systems have the ability to add a digital
signature to an executable. Windows already has this feature; when you do
right mouse in the file explorer and select properties the dialog you get
can include a tab for digital signature if the executable has one. A
command line tool is also available for examining, deleting or adding a
signature to an executable.

GPG (the GNU privacy Guard) allows files to be digitally signed but the
emphasis is on text rather than binary. I raised the subject on the GPG
mailing list and was directed to this article about adding sections to an
ELF file:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1088128/adding-section-to-elf-file . It
referred to the ERSI project, see https://github.com/thorkill/eresi, which
provides a way to manipulate an ELF via an API. So I was wondering, what if
binutils included the command line tool for adding, deleting and listing
digital signatures on ELF executables (using ERSI)?

-- 
Regards,

Andrew Marlow
http://www.andrewpetermarlow.co.uk