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It would be helpful to mention “signature” in the Data Integrity section. It’s not mentioned specially until later, which is a bit confusing … unless I’m confus
by semireg 3y ago
It would be helpful to mention “signature” in the Data Integrity section. It’s not mentioned specially until later, which is a bit confusing … unless I’m confusing HMAC with the signatures related to CAs mentioned later in the article. Are they both not signatures?
- SAI_Peregrinus 3y agoHMAC is a Message Authentication Code (MAC), not a cryptographic signature. The key difference is that anyone who can verify a MAC could also have created it, whereas with a signature only one entity could create the signature but anyone at all can verify it (the public key is public). MACs therefore allow repudiation of the authenticated data (one party can claim that any other party with the shared key created the MAC), while signatures prevent that (only the holder of the private key could have signed). They're related, in that they both provide message authentication and integrity, but otherwise quite different constructions.