Scripting: Fetch File Signer

PowerShell can retrieve the certificate information from a binary file. From a scripting perspective it is often useful to extract the Common Name (CN) to validate files. However, the default PowerShell output is difficult to parse because the subject fields are in an unpredictable order and may contain quotes etc:

powershell (Get-AuthenticodeSignature 'jre-8u251-windows-i586.exe').SignerCertificate.Subject
[email protected], CN="Oracle America, Inc.", OU=Software Engineering, O="Oracle America, Inc.", L=Redwood City, S=California, C=US

powershell (Get-AuthenticodeSignature 'c:\windows\explorer.exe').SignerCertificate.Subject
CN=Microsoft Windows, O=Microsoft Corporation, L=Redmond, S=Washington, C=US

and

powershell (Get-AuthenticodeSignature 'pkzipc.exe').SignerCertificate.Subject
OU=Engineering, CN="PKWARE, Inc.", L=Brown Deer, S=Wisconsin, C=US, OU=Digital ID Class 3 - Microsoft Software Validation v2, OU="www.verisign.com/repository/RPA Incorp. by Ref.,LIAB.LTD(c)98", OU=VeriSign Commercial Software Publishers CA, O="VeriSign, Inc.", L=Internet

There is a simple method to determine the CN using a method which is not widely documented:

powershell (Get-AuthenticodeSignature 'jre-8u251-windows-i586.exe').SignerCertificate.DnsNameList.Unicode
Oracle America, Inc.

Note this does not seem to work in PowerShell Core.



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