Digital Signature - Definition

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 that, given a message and a private key, produces a signature.
  • A signature verifying algorithm that, given a message, public key and a signature, either accepts or rejects the message's claim to authenticity.

Two main properties are required. First, a signature generated from a fixed message and fixed private key should verify the authenticity of that message by using 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.

Read more about this topic:  Digital Signature

Famous quotes containing the word definition:

    The definition of good prose is proper words in their proper places; of good verse, the most proper words in their proper places. The propriety is in either case relative. The words in prose ought to express the intended meaning, and no more; if they attract attention to themselves, it is, in general, a fault.
    Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)

    ... if, as women, we accept a philosophy of history that asserts that women are by definition assimilated into the male universal, that we can understand our past through a male lens—if we are unaware that women even have a history—we live our lives similarly unanchored, drifting in response to a veering wind of myth and bias.
    Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)

    No man, not even a doctor, ever gives any other definition of what a nurse should be than this—”devoted and obedient.” This definition would do just as well for a porter. It might even do for a horse. It would not do for a policeman.
    Florence Nightingale (1820–1910)