Are trial SSL certificates enough for signing the firefox extension file?

Question

Good afternoon everyone!

As you may know, many companies that sell SSL certificates offer free trial certificates (that usually expire in 30 or 50 days). StartCom is the exception - they give 1-year free SSL Class 1 certificates.

The question is: are these certificates enough for me to sign my Firefox extension? Note: I'm not asking if these are good for the task - I want to discuss only the physical possibility of code signing the xpi file with these free certificates.

Thank you.

Answer 1

You need a code signing certificate and not an SSL certificate to sign an add-on. None of the ones you listed will work.

Answer 2

I have not heard of the "trials" you are talking about, but if they are legitimate certificates then they will work. I would recommend reading the Certificate Authority and the Public key infrastructure articles on Wikipedia.

Answer 3

You can sign anything with any certificate provided you have the private key.

Whether the certificate is valid is another issue.