Kevin Wong and Dr. Gordon Romney, Information Technology
As digital media storage is growing ever more popular, security of this data is becoming more and more important. Intruders can relatively easily alter digital files and documents. Several customers, such as the Harold B. Lee Library, the archivist of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Director of the Center for Earth Remote Sensing, need the assurance of data integrity, as the users of these files require unaltered content. A digital signature signing server can receive a digital file, digitally sign it, and store the digital signature with the original file. When needed, the server can regenerate the signature and compare it with the original signature. If these signatures match, it would ensure file integrity. If not, it would mean that the file has been tampered with.
Managing these digital signatures needs to be simple, intuitive, and reliable. One needs to be able to generate new signatures and retrieve others without much difficulty, and this process needs to be reliable. Verification of digital assets needs to be clear and reliable.
For this project, a web interface1 was the most logical route to take. Such an interface allows the user to manage his/her digital assets in a familiar way. Although the signing servers could potentially be accessed from anywhere in the world, it is currently only accessible from one computer – the user’s desktop computer.
The interface itself is a fairly simple and intuitive tool. The user can manage assets, view the history and log, edit descriptions, and more. To manage the assets, the user can sign2, verify, upload, or divide.
As digital storage grows in popularity and lowers in cost, the market is going more and more towards converting everything to a digital format. It is easier to store, can be remotely accessible, and can be easily transported, among other things. Costs are cut down but fewer trees are, and almost anyone can learn the necessary skills in a relatively short amount of time. But as with everything else, precautions must be taken. Having a digital format not only means that it’s easy to store, but it also means that it’s easy to lose. And having it easily accessible to almost everyone means that almost everyone really can access it – friend or foe. Security of these documents is therefore just as important as security for a paper document.
The problem with digital media is that it can be easily tampered with, putting at risk both the integrity and authenticity of the file. An email sent from person A to person B can easily be viewed and altered by an interceptor, and sent along its way, without either A or B knowing. A project proposal can be found and edited by an intruder, and the team may not know until management kicks them out of the company. Or a digital image can be changed to hide proof of a crime, and thus destroy evidence to convict a felon. Data security is a major concern of the industry today.
A digital signature ensures that a file is in its original state, thus guaranteeing the file’s integrity. There are several different signing algorithms that generate such a signature, producing a unique signature for each file. A signature is simply a digital file. As long as a generated signature matches the original signature for a given file, the file is guaranteed to be in its original state. It authenticates the file because even a minute change in the file will alter the signature.
