Warning Message: The Publisher Cannot Be Verified

Posted on: May 18th, 2010

This warning message occasionally pops up when you try to run something that you downloaded, usually from the Internet.

So what does this message mean?

To understand this I need to make sure you understand digital signatures. If you are not familiar with that term then please read the article What is a Digital Signature.

Executable files are nowadays usually have a digital signature, that way the publisher (source) can be verified and the user can make sure that it’s not altered from it’s original version.

However if the program was not made by a bigger company, or a professional then he/she might not have taken the extra steps to get the file digitally signed. This means that sometimes legitimate programs can generate this warning message too.

However, you should not ever idly bypass this message. Always check what the name of the file is to be sure that is the one that you intended to run. If you are in doubt then do a Google search on the name to see what it is.

There’s also another version of this that you can see here.

This is a similar warning but only comes up if the program that you started is trying to do things that would require elevated privileges (such as changing system settings, installing software, etc). Most commonly software installer are producing this prompt.

Here again the reason why you get this is because the file was not signed digitally. The software could be legitimate but search around if you have any doubt about the source of the software.

Conclusion

These warning message are to inform you that the computer could not verify the source of the file. This does not always mean that it’s not a legitimate, bona fide software but cautions should be taken if you get this message. Most of the unwanted and malicious software do not have valid digital signatures and this verification step can be useful to detect those.

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