Recommendation for Obtaining Assurances for Digital Signature Applications - NIST Special Publication 800-89

GuidanceNational Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)Information Security

A digital signature is an electronic analogue of a written signature; the digital signature can be used to provide assurance that the claimed signatory signed the information. In addition, a digital signature may be used to detect whether or not the information was modified after it was signed (i.e., to detect the integrity of the signed data). Each signatory has a public and private key and is the owner of that key pair. The private key is used by the owner to generate a digital signature; the public key is used in the signature verification process.

Entities participating in the generation or verification of digital signatures depend on the authenticity of the process. This Recommendation specifies methods for obtaining the assurances necessary for valid digital signatures: assurance of domain parameter validity, assurance of public key validity, assurance that the key pair owner actually possesses the private key, and assurance of the identity of the key pair owner.

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