Jcat 0.1 Released As Alternative To Microsoft Catalog Files

Richard Hughes of Fwupd/LVFS, PackageKit, and Colord notoriety last month announced Jcat as a new open-source project he initiated to serve as an alternative to Microsoft's Catalog files proprietary format.

Jcat is an open-source alternative to Microsoft Catalog files and was started as a format for handling arbitrary signatures for external files. The initial focus is on the Fwupd/LVFS use-case in ensuring BIOS/firmware files are not tampered with prior to flashing on the local system. Jcat is a JSON-based file format with Gzip compression and contains a set of detached signatures.

Announced today is the initial Jcat release at version 0.1.0. Hughes noted in today's announcement he is working on getting Jcat added into Fedora and he has also been receiving positive format on the young project. At least one hardware vendor is currently evaluating Jcat for their self-signing of firmware for LVFS.