Digital Signatures
Digital signatures allow us to add functionality to our classes by authenticating
who we are and that our classes have not been altered.
- Initially, Java Applets were completely untrusted. They could not perform certain risky tasks such as writing to or reading from the hard drive.
- But, this isn't practical, because sometimes we want to authorize the applets to do more in exchange for acknowledging that we trust the author and the integrity of the source code.
- Message Digests tell us that the bytecode has not been altered by an unwanted third party since it was published by the author.
- Message Signing allows us to see who wrote it and allow the program to run these at risk operations based on that knowledge.