A strange infosec guideline implemented in our where any exe application developed using Visual Studio on our laptop cannot be debugged on Visual studio itself. There is a blanket ban of executing any exe on our laptop recently preventing us from debugging any application developed using Visual studio. Now windows team is saying that they can give exception if our exe contains "Publisher Name" as "Microsoft" or "OrgName". We get option in Visual studio 2022 to set Publisher Name under Project file Properties for .Net framework 4.x but the same option is not available for .Netcore apps. Even though .Net framework 4.x has the option to set "Publisher Name" but the same is not getting reflected when we double click on the built exe.

Now the suggestion I needed here are:

1. if at all you guys came across such restrictions and how did you overcome.
2. How to set the Publisher Name for an exe in the debug folder based on both .Net and .Netcore.

any suggestion that put me in the right direction would be great help...Thanks in advance.

Edit: Adding screenshot for reference.

Edit 2: Adding screen shot from Windows Defender alert

A strange infosec guideline implemented in our where any exe application developed using Visual Studio on our laptop cannot be debugged on Visual studio itself. There is a blanket ban of executing any exe on our laptop recently preventing us from debugging any application developed using Visual studio. Now windows team is saying that they can give exception if our exe contains "Publisher Name" as "Microsoft" or "OrgName". We get option in Visual studio 2022 to set Publisher Name under Project file Properties for .Net framework 4.x but the same option is not available for .Netcore apps. Even though .Net framework 4.x has the option to set "Publisher Name" but the same is not getting reflected when we double click on the built exe.

Now the suggestion I needed here are:

1. if at all you guys came across such restrictions and how did you overcome.
2. How to set the Publisher Name for an exe in the debug folder based on both .Net and .Netcore.

any suggestion that put me in the right direction would be great help...Thanks in advance.

Edit: Adding screenshot for reference.

Edit 2: Adding screen shot from Windows Defender alert

• c#
• visual-studio
• visual-studio-2022

• Is the "publisher name" that you mean the Author and/or Company? If so, there is a way to solve it by using a configuration file for your solution folder – m.lucas Commented Jan 30 at 11:57
• @m.lucas i added screenshot as edit. Its the Publisher Name not the Author or Company name. – Raju Commented Jan 30 at 12:22
• IMO your anization just made it impossible to develop software in-house. Whoever came up with that policy knows nothing about software development. They need to be fired, or else at least thoroughly educated. Thanks for listening to my TED talk. – Peter B Commented Jan 30 at 13:56
• You'll need a certificate to sign your application to guarantee that it's trusted. – Jiachen Li-MSFT Commented Jan 31 at 7:10

1 Answer 1

This is handled by the certificate the application is signed with. Getting your code signed through a credible certificate authority is almost the only way to distribute your software and have people trust your code.

Here's some good documentation how code signing works, how it verifies authenticity and more:

https://pkic./uploads/2013/10/CASC-Code-Signing.pdf

You could self sign, however, it will only apply to the local machine that has it installed.

DigiCert is what our company uses for our application certificates:

https://www.digicert/signing/code-signing-certificates