difference between signtool and sn or al for assembly signing

Question

I see tool like SN which generates private/public key pair for signing an assembly. and using AL tool we can assign a strong name to an assembly

And we have also Sign tool which is used for signing the assembly (probably for using with certificates exclusively?).

What is the exact difference between the two?. Is it sign tool have to be used when working with certificates and can it we acheive it SN?. or are they totally different.?

Please help.

Answer 1

Signtool is to do code signing, which provides code integrity check and authentication of the publisher.

Sn is to do strong name. It's just for .NET assembly. It addresses the unique ID issue.

Both tools can make sure the files have not been tampered with but only code signing (signtool) can assure you who is the publisher of the files.

We can use SignTool.exe to sign and time stamp a file with given pfx, even though the file is a strong named dll.