Not that I normally like to rant, but security is really important, and people are bad at security. One of the ways we secure things is trusted certificates—as a software developer who has a company something you need to do is buy a certificate to “sign” your software. Your certificate is issued by a 3rd party who performs some level of verification which indicates that you are a “real” software developer. It is a key part of the trust relationship when installing software. In fact unsigned software is used an indication by experts to identify malware.
So who is the victim of my rant this week? Power Tap, the company that makes the power meter on my bicycle. They also make software that lets me download my cycling data. This software has two problems:
- It requires Java. Boo, hiss.
- It is unsigned. More booing, and hissing.
So, sign your software, so people don’t think it’s a virus. On my Mac I have to go into security settings and do bad things to even install this software. And then I have to do even worse things, like installing Java, in order to use it.
