Digital Signatures

Digital signatures should be, in a sense, similar to hand-written ones. Unlike a written one, an electronic document is not tied to any particular storage media. Thus it can be easily copied, transmitted, and manipulated. Digital signatures have to create some sort of digital “encapsulation” for the document, so any interference with either its contents or the signature will be detected with a very high probability. Typically, a signed document must be verifiable by anyone using some publicly accessible information.