Kernel driver signing

I have done a great deal of looking around, and I can't seem to get a straightforward answer to this issue.

I am hobbyist programmer, I have done a great deal of work with windows drivers, and wrote my own personal 'antivirus' driver for windows XP. So don't get me wrong here, I don't work for any software development firm or anything of the like.

My question is: as far as windows 7 x64 is concerned, is there any possible legit and legal method I can use to release sign my driver that would only be for my own personal use?

Yes I am well aware I can test sign my driver and run it in a virtual machine under windows test mode, which I do quite frequently. However if you have used windows in test mode you know there are some major drawbacks.

So to to sum this all up, is it possible for me ( a hobbyist ) to release sign a driver for my own personal use and not have to deal with win开发者_如何学编程dows test mode?

Thanks.

If it's a boot time required driver, I don't think there is a way you can get it to use it without signing it with a certificate from a Microsoft sanctioned provider (Verisign only I think for drivers?).

If this is a normal device driver that isn't required at boot you can create your own certificates and use those instead. I did it myself for Vista x64 to get an HP ScanJet driver to work from XP x64 by signing the .sys and the .inf files.

I used Active Directory Certificate Services on my domain to issue a Code Signing certificate for my use and had my machine trust the ADCS CA certificate. These two actions will cause Windows to trust your signed driver.

I believe you could use OpenSSL to create a CA certificate and issue code signing certificates with that, but I've had no practice with it.

Again, to reiterate, if this driver is required at boot then this method will not work, if it's used for a device which can be attached at anytime, it should work.

You can have the ReactOS Foundation do it for you.

Please refer to my answer to this post: Windows 7 kernel driver signing.

So to to sum this all up, is it possible for me ( a hobbyist ) to release sign a driver for my own personal use and not have to deal with windows test mode?

Yes.

For boot time drivers: Go to VeriSign, buy the (only?) code signing certificate ($500), and sign your driver.

For non-boot drivers: You can self-sign, with appropriate warnings.