A digital signature serves the same purpose as a handwritten signature.However, a handwritten signature is easy to counterfeit. A digital signature is superior to a handwritten signature in that it is nearly impossible to counterfeit, plus it attests to the contents of the information as well as the identity of the signer.
Digital signature creation
This consists of the following stages:
The signer first creates the message that he is desirous of digitally signing.
He then uses a hash function (say SHA1) to compute the hash result (also called message digest) of the message.
He then uses his private key to digitally sign the message digest.
The signer then sends the original message and the digitally signed message digest to the receiver.
Digital signature verification
This consists of the following stages:
The receiver receives the original message and the digitally signed message digest from the sender.
The receiver computes the message digest from the original message using the same hash function as used by the sender (SHA1 in this case). He then compares the message digest computed by him to the message digest sent to him by the sender. If they are the same it implies that the message has not been altered unauthorizedly.
The receiver then verifies whether the private key of the sender was actually used to sign the message digest. He does this using the public key of the sender
3 comments:
electronic signature pad
I was actually confused about the idea of adopting this scheme or not. After reading this information I got to know the importance and usage of digital signature over hand written signature. Thanks for sharing about this awesome technology.
Hi, nice post. Well what can I say is that these is an interesting and very informative topic. Thanks for sharing your ideas, its not just entertaining but also gives your reader knowledge. Good blogs style too, Cheers!
- The online signature
Post a Comment