Not necessarily. Driver QA & signing is not malware exorcising magic. If you are a genuine hardware vendor, giving them an actual, working driver binary so the

Not necessarily. Driver QA & signing is not malware exorcising magic. If you are a genuine hardware vendor, giving them an actual, working driver binary so they can run whatever QA and static static analysis test suite on the binary, you might have the benefit of a doubt and get it signed once it passes. That assumption of good faith mixed with "Betriebsblindheit" is probably all it takes to get a signed driver with a backdoor/rootkit/whatever in it. For comparison: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26887670 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26887670 EDIT: I'm not trying to imply that's what happened here, we don't have enough details yet. Just trying to point out, that binary signing isn't a panacea and doesn't require Ethan Hunt cable dangling into a secure computer room to work around.