Cybersecurity - Enhancing Digital Transaction Authentication through Improved Digital Signature Process
Loubna Ali, Chakib Ben Njima, Balaganesh Duraisamy, Waseem M. Alhasan, Ali Hasan Ali · 2025
Digital signatures are crucial for ensuring the authenticity, integrity, and non-repudiation of digital messages, especially in business applications where data security is paramount. This paper explores improvements to the digital signature process, focusing on the RSA algorithm and its integration with the SHA-256 hashing algorithm. By employing variations in the RSA algorithm, such as using different numbers of prime factors (two and four primes), we aim to enhance the security and efficiency of digital signatures. The research is divided into four scenarios: H2PN, H4PN, A2PN, and A4PN, each differing in the number of prime factors used and whether the hash value is signed directly or converted to ASCII before signing. The effectiveness of these scenarios is evaluated using texts of varying lengths, from short phrases to longer passages, to measure the avalanche effect—the change in the output when a single bit of the input is altered. Experimental results demonstrate that increasing the number of prime factors generally enhances the security of the digital signatures by increasing the avalanche effect. The proposed methods are compared with traditional RSA and other cryptographic algorithms, highlighting improvements in both security and performance. Our findings suggest that converting the hash to an alphanumerical format (ASCII) before encryption significantly improves the avalanche effect, enhancing the security and robustness of the digital signatures. Each scenario is tested multiple times to ensure accuracy, and the results demonstrate that using four prime numbers and alphanumerical conversion yields the best performance in terms of avalanche effect and overall security. In conclusion, this study provides valuable insights into optimizing digital signatures using advanced RSA configurations, offering a practical solution for enhanced data security in digital communications.