Cryptography and System
Security
Digital Signature
Authentication Protocols
and Digital Signature
Schemes
Sejal Chopra
Assistant Professor - Dept. of Computer Engineering
Don Bosco Institute of Technology, Mumbai
Contents to be discussed
• Digital Signature-Introduction
• Difference between conventional and digital signatures
• How do you create a digital signature?
• Services provided by digital signatures
• Digital signature using RSA algorithm
• Attacks on Digital signature
• Numerical on Digital signature using RSA
Digital Signature-Introduction
• A digital signature is a mathematical technique
used to validate the authenticity and integrity of a
digital document, message or software.
• It's the digital equivalent of a handwritten
signature or stamped seal, but it offers far more
inherent security.
• A digital signature is intended to solve the
problem of tampering and impersonation in digital
communications.
• Digital signatures can provide evidence of origin,
identity and status of electronic documents,
transactions or digital messages.
• Signers can also use them to acknowledge
informed consent.
Difference between Conventional and
Digital signatures
How do you create a digital signature?
How do you create a digital signature?
• To create a digital signature, signing software -- such as an
email program -- is used to provide a one-way hash of the
electronic data to be signed.
• A hash is a fixed-length string of letters and numbers
generated by an algorithm. The digital signature creator's
private key is used to encrypt the hash. The encrypted
hash -- along with other information, such as the hashing
algorithm -- is the digital signature.
• The reason for encrypting the hash instead of the entire
message or document is because a hash function can
convert an arbitrary input into a fixed-length value, which
is usually much shorter. This saves time, as hashing is
much faster than signing.
How do you create a digital signature?
• The value of a hash is unique to the hashed data. Any
change in the data -- even a modification to a single
character -- results in a different value. This attribute
enables others to use the signer's public key to decrypt the
hash to validate the integrity of the data.
• If the decrypted hash matches a second computed hash of
the same data, it proves that the data hasn't changed since
it was signed. But, if the two hashes don't match, the data
has either been tampered with in some way and is
compromised or the signature was created with a private
key that doesn't correspond to the public key presented by
the signer. This signals an issue with authentication.
Important to Remember
Services Provided by Digital Signature
Services Provided by Digital Signature
Digital Signature using RSA for only
message
Digital Signature using RSA for digest
Attacks on Digital Signature
Known-message Attack :
• In the known message attack, C has a few previous messages
and signatures of A.
• Now C tries to forge the signature of A on to the documents that
A does not intend to sign by using the brute force method by
analyzing the previous data to recreate the signature of A.
• This attack is similar to known-plain text attack in encryption.
Key-only Attack :
• In key-only attack, the public key of A is available to every one
and C makes use of this fact and try to recreate the signature of A
and digitally sign the documents or messages that A does not
intend to do.
• This would cause a great threat to authentication of the message
which is non-repudiated as A cannot deny signing it.
Attacks on Digital Signature
Chosen message attack:
Generic chosen message attack:
• C chooses a list of messages before attempting to breaks A’s
signature scheme, independent of A’s public key.
• C then obtains from A valid signatures for the chosen messages.
• The attack is generic, because it does not depend on A’s public
key; the same attack is used against everyone.
Directed chosen message attack:
• Similar to the generic attack, except that the list of messages to
be signed is chosen after C knows A’s public key but before any
signatures are seen.
Adaptive chosen message attack:
• C is allowed to use A as an “oracle.” This means that A may
request signatures of messages that depend on previously
obtained message–signature pairs.
Numerical on Digital Signature using
RSA
Alice chooses public key as (7, 33) and B chooses
public key as (13, 221).Calculate their private keys. A
wishes to send message M=5 to B. Show the
message signing and verification using RSA digital
signature .
References
• William Stallings, “Cryptography and Network Security,
Principles and Practice”, 6th Edition, Pearson Education,
March 2013
• Behrouz A. Ferouzan, “Cryptography & Network Security”,
Tata McGraw Hill
THANK YOU
