.NET Security and Cryptography

Chapter Five. Digital Signatures

In the previous chapter we looked at how asymmetric algorithms, particularly RSA, can be used to achieve privacy. It turns out that there is another facet to asymmetric algorithms, known as digital signing, that is used to achieve authentication, integrity, and nonrepudiation. In this chapter, we look at how digital signatures work, and, in particular, we look at how RSA and DSA (Digital Signature Algorithm) are used to implement digital signatures. Both RSA and DSA are fully supported by the .NET Framework, so we look at complete programming examples to demonstrate these two signature techniques.

Digital signatures also require another type of cryptographic primitive, known as cryptographic hash algorithms. ...