Digital Signatures

Digital signatures are commonly used in the following situations:

• To provide a unique proof of the data source, which can only be generated by a single party, such as with contract signing in e-commerce environments

• To authenticate a user by using the private key of that user and the signature it generates

• To prove the authenticity and integrity of public key infrastructure (PKI) certificates

• To provide a secure time stamp, such as with a central trusted time source

Digital signatures provide three basic security services in secure communications:

To achieve these goals, digital signatures have the following properties: