An Efficient implementation of PKI architecture based Digital Signature using RSA and various hash functions (MD5 and SHA variants)

Abstract

 Abstract: Digital Signature technique is widely being used to detect unauthorized modification to data and to authenticate the identity of the signatory. It is essential for secure transaction over unsecure/ open networks. Digital Signature schemes are mostly used in cryptographic protocols to provide services like entity authentication, authenticated key transport and key agreement. The PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) based digital signature architecture is related with RSA algorithm and secure Hash functions (MD5 &, SHA variants). RSA digital signature algorithm is an asymmetric cryptographic method whose security is associated with difficulty of factorization and hash function is applied to the message to yields a fixed-size message digest. This paper explores the PKI architecture based digital signature and presents an efficient way of its implementation and discusses various issues associated with signature schemes based upon RSA and hash functions. The results show that signing and verification are much faster in the developed application.