Digital signature

A cryptographic value generated with a private key that lets others verify a message’s origin and integrity using the corresponding public key.

Public-key cryptography: Cryptography using mathematically related public and private keys for encryption, authentication, or key agreement. Digital signatures are one use of this broader cryptographic framework.
Public key: A cryptographic value that can be shared openly and paired with a corresponding private key. Anyone can use the public key to check a signature attributed to its holder.
Code signing: The use of digital signatures to identify software publishers and detect changes to software packages. A signature lets operating systems check a program’s publisher and whether it was altered.
RSA: A public-key cryptosystem whose security relies on the difficulty of factoring large integers. RSA can support signatures, though its assumptions and operation differ from elliptic-curve schemes.
Cryptographic hash function: A function that maps arbitrary data to a fixed-length digest designed to resist collisions and inversion. Many signature schemes sign a message’s digest rather than its full contents.
Message authentication code: A tag produced with a shared secret key to authenticate a message between parties that know the secret. Unlike a signature, a MAC does not let independent parties verify authorship.
Secure email: Email protected with cryptographic techniques for confidentiality, authentication, or integrity. Email standards use signatures to authenticate senders and detect message changes.
EdDSA: A family of digital signature schemes based on Edwards-curve digital signatures. EdDSA offers a modern alternative with deterministic signing and compact keys.
Private key: A secret cryptographic value used by its holder to perform operations such as signing or decryption. The signer uses this secret value to create a signature others can verify.
Collision resistance: A hash-function property making it computationally infeasible to find two distinct inputs with the same digest. Weak collision resistance can enable a signer to approve one message while presenting another.

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