Java Security, 2nd Edition

Chapter 12. Digital Signatures

In this chapter, we explore the mechanisms of the digital signature. The use and verification of digital signatures is another standard engine that is included in the security provider architecture. Like the other engines we’ve examined, the classes that implement this engine have both a public interface and an SPI for implementors of the engine.

We’ll start by looking at the interface of the digital signature engine and see how you can create digitally signed objects that you can send between programs. We’ll continue by looking into the details of digitally signed classes, including the jarsigner tool that creates those classes and how you can deal with those classes programatically. We’ll conclude by looking at the details of the engine algorithm and how you can implement your own digital signature algorithms.