Application of digital signature

Application of digital signature is on the rise because of legal and technological developments, along with government initiated strong market demand for secured transactions on the Internet. Digital signature applications involve encrypting messages in such a way that only legitimate parties are able to decrypt the message. Two separate but interrelated ‘keys’ known as public key and Privet key carry out this process of encryption and decryption. A digital signature satisfies all the functions, such as authenticity, non-repudiation, and security, of a hand-written signature. The applications of DS technology are not only restricted to secure online communication. Digital signature applications is been used in diversified functions such as secured access, authentication and confidentiality. Furthermore, application for digital signature has increased because there is no efficient way to modify a message/transaction and its signature to produce a new message/ transaction with a valid signature, because this is still considered to be computationally infeasible by most cryptographic hash functions

Authenticity:Although messages mostly include information about the entity sending a message, that information may not be accurate. Digital signatures can be used to authenticate the source of messages. When ownership of a digital signature secret key is bound to a specific user, a valid signature shows that the message was sent by that user. The importance of high confidence in sender authenticity is especially obvious in a financial context. For example, suppose a tender..........

Non-repudiation:non-repudiation of origin is an important aspect of digital signatures. By this property an entity that has signed some information cannot at a later time deny having signed it. Similarly, access to the public key only does not enable a fraudulent party to fake a valid signature.

Security and Confidentiality: In many scenarios, the sender and receiver of a message have a need for confidence that the message has not been altered during transmission or have not been read by unauthorized entities. Although encryption hides the contents of a message, it may be possible to change an encrypted message without understanding it. However, if a message is digitally signed, any change in the message after signature will invalidate the signature. Also an application can be generated that will not allow anyone from opening the document without a pre- specified valid Digital Signature.