Digital Signature(not detached)

All digital signatures are detached, by nature. What makes them part of the signed object are technical standards describing the signed object with the included signature (as in PKCS7 or XMLSignature). You can, technically, create a signature on any object - text or binary - and attach the signature to the object in any manner that is meaningful to your application. However, if you want the signed object to be portable, then you must use one of the defined standards so that other applications can understand where your object begins and ends, where the signature begins and ends, etc. without your having to provide detailed schematics of your "proprietary" data structure.

In the long term, even if you believe other applications will never access your signed objects, you are better off using an industry standard for the signed objects since you will enhance your own knowledge on the standards (thus increasing the value of your own skills), while maintaining some semblance of order in this increasingly chaotic IT world.

arshad.noora at 2007-7-14 20:44:57 >