digital signature
Extra data appended to a message which
identifies and authenticates the sender and message data using
{public-key encryption}.
The sender uses a {one-way hash function} to generate a
hash-code of about 32 bits from the message data. He then
encrypts the hash-code with his private key. The receiver
recomputes the hash-code from the data and decrypts the
received hash with the sender's public key. If the two
hash-codes are equal, the receiver can be sure that data has
not been corrupted and that it came from the given sender.
(1995-02-07)