A cryptographic mechanism that lets the holder of a private key produce a value attached to a message which anyone holding the matching public key can verify, confirming both who signed the message and that it was not altered afterward.
Facts
Core PrincipleA digital signature is a mathematical scheme for verifying the authenticity of digital messages or documents, giving a recipient confidence that a message came from a known sender and was not altered. 1 Connections
In Field
Invented
Martin Hellman and Whitfield Diffie's 1976 New Directions in Cryptography paper first proposed the concept of a digital signature.
Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman's 1976 New Directions in Cryptography paper first proposed the concept of a digital signature.
Sources
1. Digital signature - Wikipedia
History section, first paragraph
In 1976, Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman first described the notion of a digital signature scheme, although they only conjectured that such schemes existed based on functions that are trapdoor one-way permutations.
Lead section, opening sentence
A digital signature is a mathematical scheme for verifying the authenticity of digital messages or documents.
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