Digital Signature in Coimbatore
A digital signature is a mathematical scheme for demonstrating the authenticity of a digital message or document. A valid digital signature gives a recipient reason to believe that the message was created by a known sender, such that the sender cannot deny having sent the message authentication and non – repudiation that the message was not altered in transit integrity. Digital signatures are commonly used for software distribution, financial transactions, and in other cases where it is important to detect forgery or tampering.
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, India, Brazil, and members of the European Union, electronic signatures have legal significance.
Digital signatures employ a type of asymmetric cryptography. For messages sent through a no secure channel, a properly implemented digital signature gives the receiver reason to believe the message was sent by the claimed sender. Digital signatures are equivalent to traditional handwritten signatures in many respects, but properly implemented digital signatures are more difficult to forge than the handwritten type. Digital signature schemes, in the sense used here, are cryptographically based, and must be implemented properly to be effective. Digital signatures can also provide non – repudiation, meaning that the signer cannot successfully claim they did not sign a message, while also claiming their private key remains secret, further, some non-repudiation schemes offer a time stamp for the digital signature, so that even if the private key is exposed, the signature is valid. Digitally signed messages may be anything represents able as a bit string: examples include electronic mail, contracts, or a message sent via some other cryptographic protocol
In their foundational paper, Goldwasser, Micali, and Rivest lay out a hierarchy of attack models against digital signatures.
- In a key-only attack, the attacker is only given the public verification key.
- In a known message attack, the attacker is given valid signatures for a variety of messages known by the attacker but not chosen by the attacker.
- In an adaptive chosen message attack, the attacker first learns signatures on arbitrary messages of the attacker's choice.
They also describe a hierarchy of attack results.
- A total break results in the recovery of the signing key.
- A universal forgery attack results in the ability to forge signatures for any message.
- A selective forgery attack results in a signature on a message of the adversary's choice.
- An existential forgery merely results in some valid message/signature pair not already known to the adversary.
The strongest notion of security, therefore, is security against existential forgery under an adaptive chosen message attack.
Applications of digital signatures
As organizations move away from paper documents with ink signatures or authenticity stamps, digital signatures can provide added assurances of the evidence to provenance, identity, and status of an electronic document as well as acknowledging informed consent and approval by a signatory. The United States Government Printing Office (GPO) publishes electronic versions of the budget, public and private laws, and congressional bills with digital signatures. Universities including Penn State, university of Chicago, and Stanford are publishing electronic student transcripts with digital signatures. Below are some common reasons for applying a digital signature to communications.
