digital signature

cryptography Extra data appended to a message which

identifies and authenticates the sender and message data using

public-key encryption.

The sender uses a one-way hash function to generate a

hash-code of about 32 bits from the message data. He then

encrypts the hash-code with his private key. The receiver

recomputes the hash-code from the data and decrypts the

received hash with the sender's public key. If the two

hash-codes are equal, the receiver can be sure that data has

not been corrupted and that it came from the given sender.

(1995-02-07)