Updated March 28, 2023
Introduction to Digital Signature Types
In our everyday life, the use of signatures is inseparable. Signatures, like showing identification, protecting a letter’s or document’s credibility, or making corrections to a document/letter as evidence of approval of an amendment, have several important functions for everyone here. Basically, we have 3 types of Signatures. According to technology, there are mainly three types of signatures which are basic, advance, and Simple. A simple digital signature is the easiest digital signature as no encryption is secured. Basic digital signatures are not very different from simple digital signatures. The Advanced & Qualified digital signature is the best digital signature and has the same legal value as the wet paper signature.
Digital Signature Algorithm
Digital Signature consists of three algorithms:
- First is the key generation that helps in getting the private key from the possible values. It gives the private key and corresponding public key as well.
- Second is the signing algorithm that helps in the signature generation for the corresponding message and private key.
- The third is the signature verifying algorithm that is used to accept or decline the authenticity of a document or message for the corresponding public key and signature.
It is also known as G, S, and V. It helps save the message and document from several attacks. There can be other attacks like key only attack, know message attack, and adaptive chosen message attack.
Different Types of Digital Signature
3 types of digital signatures are being used as mentioned below:
Class 1:
It provides the assurance that information provided in the document or digital data or message provided by the owner should not conflict with the information in the well-recognized database. It can be issued for both individual and professional use. It is used to provide a basic level of assurance that is relevant to environments where there are risks and data compromise sequences. Still, they are not considered to be of major significance.
Class 2:
It is being issued for both personal and private individuals. It can include the transactions having a substantial value of risk or fraud. It can also include access to private information, and access to malicious is substantial. It is also used to confirm that the owner’s information should not conflict with other well-informed or recognized databases.
Class 3:
It is also being used or issued to organizations and individuals as well. This provides high-level security for the data. The threats to data are at high risk, or the failure of security services is also high, and its results are significant. It also includes high-level transactions, or the level of fraud risk is high.
These 3 certificates have their own security level, and these are meant for particular categories of professional and sector of the industry.
Importance
The digital signature provides the non-repudiation of the message, message authentication, and data integrity. The digital signature helps provide the message authentication when the user validates the digital signature with the help of using a public key that is sent by the sender, which assures that the message is corresponding to the private key and its not malware.
The digital signature provides data integrity. If there is an attack on data, then the verification of a digital signature fails at the consumer side; a hash value of the data modified will not match the algorithm’s output. This helps the consumer to decline the message and saves the system for both consumer and sender. Only the owner of the data can create a sign for the data is unique. So, if any dispute occurs in the future, the consumer can show the third party data as proof.
The digital signature is necessary to exchange the encrypted message to achieve authenticity of the data or message. It is being more reliable than the receiving of plaintext. This can be done in two ways that sign then encrypt, and encrypt then sign. The earlier one is not much used; the later one is more reliable and widely used for sending the digital doc and messages to the third party.
Digital Signature Creation
The digital signature can be created with the help of signing software, an email program, and creating a one-way hash of the data to be signed. The private key is used for hash encryption, and the value of hash encryption with other information known as hashing algorithm is the creation of a digital signature. It helps encrypt the only hash value rather than the whole document, as the hash function converts the arbitrary input to a fixed value that is usually shorter and helps in saving time and effort.
The hash value is unique, and the change in data will result in a different value even for single-digit change as well. This helps in validating the data, whether it is authentic or not, for the receiver. If the hash value after decryption matches, then the data is fine, and it is not changed. If the hashes don’t match then, it means the data has tampered with.
Conclusion
The digital signature is used in many forms like digitally signing the document, certificates, signing an email or encrypting the document and message, or it can be the computer. This can be used with any kind of message. It is simply to ensure that the data received at the receiver end is from the valid owner and authentic only. Its main asset is its uniqueness that binds the document and owner of the data together.
The digital signature is not the same as the digital certificate. Both are different things. The digital certificate is known as an electronic document that can have the digital signature of issuing authority. Digital signatures are widely used to provide the authenticity, data integrity and non-repudiation of communication and transaction handled over the Internet. It has been seen that many modern email programs support the use of digital signature because it is easy to sign the email and validate the messages.
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