Trustworthy verification and visualisation of multiple XML-signatures

Abstract

The digital signature is one of the most important cryptographic primitives. It provides data integrity, message authentication and non-repudiation, which are required attributes in security critical services, such as electronic commerce, voting or health care. Whereas previous data formats for digital signatures concentrated on signing the entire document, the XML signature standard is feasible to secure complex workflows on a document with multiple signatures. In a proof of concept implementation we demonstrate that verifying and trustworthily displaying of signed documents is realizable in standard Web browsers. The focus of our work are multisigned XML documents that introduce new requirements particularly in the field of presentation. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2005.