Treibersignatur

Treibersignatur, often translated as driver signature, refers to a digital certificate embedded within a device driver. This signature serves as a verification mechanism to ensure the driver's authenticity and integrity. When a driver is signed, it means that a trusted third-party certificate authority has validated that the driver originates from a known publisher and has not been tampered with since its creation. This process is a crucial component of modern operating system security, particularly in Windows.

The primary purpose of a Treibersignatur is to protect users from installing malicious or corrupted drivers. Operating systems like Windows employ driver signature enforcement, meaning that by default, they will only load drivers that are digitally signed. This prevents unauthorized or unverified code from running with kernel-level privileges, which could otherwise lead to system instability, data loss, or security breaches. Users can typically check the signature of a driver through its properties in the operating system's device manager.

While essential for security, there are situations where unsigned drivers might be encountered, especially with older hardware or custom-built devices. In such cases, users may need to temporarily disable driver signature enforcement to install them. However, this is generally discouraged due to the associated security risks. The concept of driver signing is a fundamental aspect of ensuring a stable and secure computing environment by verifying the trustworthiness of the software that interacts directly with hardware.