Practical Cryptography in Python: Learning Correct Cryptography by Example

© Seth James Nielson, Christopher K. Monson 2019

S. J. Nielson, C. K. MonsonPractical Cryptography in Pythonhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-4900-0_5

5. Message Integrity, Signatures, and Certificates

Seth James Nielson¹  and Christopher K. Monson²

(1)

Austin, TX, USA

(2)

Hampstead, MD, USA

 

In this chapter, we will be talking about “keyed hashes” and how asymmetric cryptography can be used to provide not only message privacy but also message integrity and authenticity via digital signatures. We will also be talking about how certificates differ from keys and why that distinction is important. Let’s dive right into an example and some code!

An Overly Simplistic Message Authentication Code (MAC)

Checking in with Alice and Bob, our East Antarctic espionage ...