Digital signature schemes are techniques to assure an entity's acknowledgement of having sent a certain message. Typically, an entity has a private key and a corresponding public key which is tied to the entity's name (see also public key infrastructure). The entity generates a string called signature which depends on the message to sign and his private key.
The fact that the entity acknowledged, i.e. that he signed the message, can be verified by anyone using the entity's public key, the message, and the signature. Data authentication and signature schemes are sometimes distinguished in the sense that in the latter, verification can be done by anyone at any time after the generation of the signature. Due to this property, the digital signature scheme achieves non-repudiation property, that is, a signer cannot later deny the fact of signing.
Some examples of digital signature schemes are RSA digital signature scheme, ElGamal digital signature scheme, Rabin digital signature scheme, Schn...
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© 2005 International Federation for Information Processing
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Sako, K. (2005). digital signature schemes. In: van Tilborg, H.C.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Cryptography and Security. Springer, Boston, MA . https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-23483-7_113
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-23483-7_113
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