Why Every Organization Needs To Follow Code Signing Best Practices

Hardening the security of an organization is extremely important as time goes on, since new techniques for infiltration are discovered often. Attacks can come from several different attack vectors, and one of the more common attacks executed today are code signing attacks. These attacks are exploited from several different means, but there are methods to harden security from these types of attacks. By following code signing best practices, you can harden your organization’s security against these attacks.

Why You Should Follow Code Signing Best Practices

As many organizations know, some of the most prevalent types of attacks today are supply chain attacks. Supply chain attacks are implemented on organizations that interact with a number of smaller organizations daily. What I mean by this is that supply chain attacks focus on organizations that provide software or tools to a number of smaller organizations. This allows threat actors to infect a tool or piece of software provided by a single organization, and in turn infect all the smaller organizations that use that tool. Some examples of supply chain attacks have been seen in recent news, such as the JBS Foods attack as well as the Colonial Pipeline attack.

Many of these supply chain attacks were done due to a lack of code signing best practices being in place. All it takes is a small gap that can be exploited by attackers to infect thousands of customers. Code signing is used as a common attack vector for supply chain attacks because with tools that are distributed to a number of different organizations, they must be updated regularly.

These updates, as long as code signing is in place, will be known to be from a trusted source, meaning the organization who created the tool or software. Without code signing, anyone could send along an update to the tool that would then infect each person who used that update, and this is exactly what happened in a number of different supply chain attacks.

Code Signing in the Industry

Though code signing is not a new technology, as companies have used it for many years, there are still gaps found in code signing techniques regularly. Though not related to code signing, recently a flaw was found in the Java coding language, the Log4J vulnerability, which has been in Java code for years. This vulnerability, even though it was only recently discovered, is within the basis of the majority of Java code on the Internet.

This recent flaw has sent the majority of the world’s companies into a panic attempting to patch this vulnerability. Many of these organizations will need to harden their security due to this flaw and keep up-to-date on updates from Java when an official patch does come out. This type of vulnerability is why it is so important to keep your systems updated with the best practices for code signing, as a large flaw like this may be found in the future.

Top Code Signing Best Practices

Below are some of the top code signing best practices that any organization can use to harden their existing security system.

Conclusion

As you can tell, hardening security whenever possible is very important to ensure the continued safety of an organization. Following best practice in all areas of computer security is very important, as a big flaw like the log4j vulnerability could be found at any time by any organization. Another great way to ensure an organization is following best practice is to monitor cybersecurity news and ensure that any patches or new methods of securing systems are updated when necessary. To learn more about how to implement our code signing product, visit our website at www.encryptionconsulting.com.