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A digital signature or digital signature scheme is a type of asymmetric cryptography used to simulate the security properties of a handwritten signature on paper. Digital signature schemes consist of at least three algorithms: a key generation algorithm, a signature algorithm, and a verification algorithm. A digital signature mainly provides authentication of a "message". In theory it can also provide non-repudiation, meaning that the authenticity of signed messages can be publicly verified, not only by the intended recipient. Messages may be anything, from electronic mail to a contract, or even a message sent in a more complicated cryptographic protocol.
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Wikipedia About Digital Signature
A digital signature or digital signature scheme is a type of asymmetric cryptography used to simulate the security properties of a handwritten signature on paper. Digital signature schemes consist of at least three algorithms: a key generation algorithm, a signature algorithm, and a verification algorithm. A digital signature mainly provides authentication of a "message". In theory it can also provide non-repudiation, meaning that the authenticity of signed messages can be publicly verified, not only by the intended recipient. Messages may be anything, from electronic mail to a contract, or even a message sent in a more complicated cryptographic protocol.
Digital signatures are often used to implement electronic signatures, a broader term that refers to any electronic data that carries the intent of a signature, but not all electronic signatures use digital signatures. In some countries, including the United States, and in the European Union, electronic signatures have legal significance. However, laws concerning electronic signatures do not always make clear their applicability towards cryptographic digital signatures, leaving their legal importance somewhat unspecified.
Definition
A digital signature scheme typically consists of three algorithms:
- A key generation algorithm that selects a private key uniformly at random from a set of possible private keys. The algorithm outputs the private key and a corresponding public key.
- A signing algorithm which, given a message and a private key, produces a signature.
- A signature verifying algorithm which given a message, public key and a signature, either accepts or rejects.
Two main properties are required. First, a signature generated from a fixed message and fixed private key should verify on that message and the corresponding public key. Secondly, it should be computationally infeasible to generate a valid signature for a party who does not possess the private key.
History
In the famous paper "New Directions in Cryptography", Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman first described the notion of a digital signature scheme, although they only conjectured that such schemes existed."Signature Schemes and Applications to Cryptographic Protocol Design", Anna Lysyanskaya, PhD thesis, MIT, 2002. Soon afterwards, Ronald Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Len Adleman invented the RSA algorithm that could be used for primitive digital signatures. (Note that this just serves as a proof-of-concept, and "plain" RSA signatures are not secure.) The first widely marketed software package to offer digital signature was Lotus Notes 1.0, released in 1989, which used the RSA algorithm.
