Digital Signatures
One topic I should discuss briefly, just because it is one of the hot topics surrounding public-key cryptography and PKI, is digital signatures. A digital signature combines a user's private key with the data to be signed so that the following occur:
Only someone possessing the private key could have created the digital signature.
Anyone can verify the digital signature by accessing the user's corresponding public key.
Any modification of the signed data invalidates the digital signature, ensuring data (and digital signature) integrity.
Essentially, digital signatures have the potential of becoming as much a way to sign an agreement as your handwritten signature is today. In fact, some states consider digital signatures legally ...
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