Digital Signatures Security Issues: A Comprehensive Literature Review

This literature review examines the security issues and challenges associated with digital signatures, particularly in cloud computing environments. It analyzes the relevance of these issues, contradictions within the literature, gaps in research, and inconsistencies in findings. The review highlights the importance of digital signatures for data security and authentication but also addresses vulnerabilities to cyber threats, data breaches, and trust issues in business transactions. It references multiple studies to provide a comprehensive overview of the problems and potential impacts on organizations, emphasizing the need for robust security measures and further research in this area. Desklib provides access to this and other solved assignments for students.

Running head: PROBLEM OR ISSUE WITH DIGITAL SIGNATURES 1
Problem or Issue with Digital Signatures
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

PROBLEM OR ISSUE WITH DIGITAL SIGNATURES 2
Abstract
The following Literature Review focuses on the latest implementations about Digital Signatures
and its utility in the business organizations to carry out financial transactions and transferring
information. The papers have been reviewed thoroughly to find out the challenges regarding
using such an advanced technology in the business processes and the ways by which the security
issues of Digital Signatures impacts the business processes. This is done through a thorough
literature review and few other important points following by it. This includes, finding the
relevance of the issues with that of the papers under review, contradiction of the papers with
respect to the issues found, the gap in the literature and the contradiction found in the literature
with respect to the issues that have been discovered.

PROBLEM OR ISSUE WITH DIGITAL SIGNATURES 3
Problem or Issue with Digital Signatures
The reasons for which Digital Signatures are widely used are for the security of data and
authenticating the source of the incoming messages received digitally. The use of Digital
Signatures have initiated such protection towards the sending and receiving of messages that
without an authenticated digital signature, no anonymous sender or receiver can exchange
messages within and no message can be altered even within their transit1. Using cryptographic
protocol suites, the Digital Signatures have made encrypting a message possible and thus has
helped in gaining huge popularity in the world of business and cloud computing. However,
issues and problems have also been noticed in the encryption methods and storage for the
messages using Digital Signatures that open a provision for Cyber Trades2. Thus, the following
report would consist of the issues and problem identified with Digital Signatures and what
impact it has over different organizations while Cyber Trading. In response to that, several
literatures would be reviewed to identify the specific problems, their relevance to the issues, the
contradictions and gaps along with the inconsistencies found within the literature.
Literature Review
As per Pancholi et al. (2016), it has been found that Digital Signatures have seen the best
implementation within the pertinent technology solution in the present times. Although there
have been many incidences where Cloud Implementations have proven to be a state of the art
technology and has helped business organizations to put up with innovative and strategic
solutions, it has also been found that the technology that is used to manage and store data are
problematic and often unsafe. Thus, the Digital Signatures were introduced to transfer and
receive messages through encrypted modes and helped to authenticate the sender and receiver
1 Hui Cao, "Research On The Security Of The Digital Learning Resources Library Based On Cloud
Storage", Advanced Materials Research 989-994 (2014): 5007-5009.
2 "DIGITAL SIGNATURE TO SECURE DATA IN CLOUD USING HOMOMORPHIC ENCRYPTION
TECHNIQUE", International Journal of Advance Engineering and Research Development 3, no. 05 (2016).

PROBLEM OR ISSUE WITH DIGITAL SIGNATURES 4
while transferring messages3. In this way, the messages would be authenticated and no
unauthorized sender or receiver can access these messages from outside without any
authentication. However, there were also identified issues in the technology as well. This has
been identified as the authentication intrusions regarding the use of digital signature in cyber
trades. Cyber Trades and international commerce are the fields that have been taken up by the
utilization of Digital Signatures4. Traditional handwritten signatures are completely replaced
with Digital Signatures nowadays; therefore, it is quite an understandable fact that commercial
transactions would be completed effectively with much more integrity, security and authenticity.
With further implementation of the cloud solutions, there are even higher risks regarding the
confidentiality and integrity of the messages passed through the use of Digital Signatures. The
working process of the Digital Signatures can be violated and the vulnerable issues are most
likely to be caused with the help of extended security and integrity issues.
As per the findings of the author Hui (2014), it has been found that banking, insurance
and other organization that deal with financial transactions have been developing concerns
regarding the transaction processes, especially at the incidences where there has not been any
prior connections between the communicating organizations. Another issue regarding the
security of Digital Signatures is the repudiation by one party of receipt or dispatch of a message.
In addition to that, there are also additional threats regarding the data masking and the hacking of
the messages by malicious attackers5. These attackers are also capable of modifying or
tampering with the messages transferred with the use of Digital Signatures. Since, nowadays, the
use of Digital Signatures have a habit of being transferred with the like of the Cloud
3 Khaled Elleithy and Tarek M Sobh, Innovations And Advances In Computer, Information, Systems Sciences, And
Engineering (New York, NY: Springer, 2013).
4 Masashi Sugimoto, "Cloud Computing Security And Forensics Issues And Awareness Of Cloud Storage Users In
Malaysia", International Journal of Cyber-Security and Digital Forensics 6, no. 1 (2017): 1-13.
5 "Enhancing Security Solutions With Collaborative Cryptography And Digital Signature Scheme In Cloud
Services", International Journal of Modern Trends in Engineering & Research 4, no. 9 (2017): 153-159.

PROBLEM OR ISSUE WITH DIGITAL SIGNATURES 5
environment, there is also a huge impending risk regarding the data loss or corrupted data during
the passing through a sender and a receiver6.
Relation with the Issues
The issues that have been identified in the following set of literatures under review, all
guide towards what the issues regarding Digital Signatures are while they are used to carry out
business transactions as well as passing confidential messages between a sender and a receiver.
The identified problems in the literatures have relevance regarding the real world issues in the
utilization of Digital Signatures under cloud environment7. Since nowadays, business
transactions and message passing is done as per the Digital Signature technologies, handwritten
signatures are becoming extinct as a method in various bigger forms of organizations.
Furthermore, the ways by which Digital Signatures are passed and authenticated, are vulnerable
to the above mentioned attacks. This can form a huge risk when a trusted business organization
tries to make a deal with another organization, which they have so far not come across. Trust is a
major issue while dealing with the Digital Signatures since based upon them, the Digital
Signatures of the sender and the receivers authenticated8. This forms a major setback when
malicious attackers catch hold of this technology and find vulnerabilities in it to barge into the
encrypted messages. Any inconsistency within the transferred message forms a major issue since
the entire business of an organization is based upon that particular message transferred digitally.
Contradiction with the Issue
6 Xixiang Lv, Yi Mu and Hui Li, "Loss-Tolerant Authentication With Digital Signatures", Security and
Communication Networks 7, no. 11 (2013): 2054-2062.
7 "PROVIDING SECURITY WITH BIOMETRIC SYSTEM TO THE HEALTH DATA USING CLOUD
STORAGE", International Journal of Recent Trends in Engineering and Research (2018): 266-272.
8 Sreeja Nair, Nupur Gautam and Meenakshi Choudhary, "Using Kerberos With Digital Signature And AES
Encryption To Provide Data Security In Cloud Computing", International Journal of Computer Applications 95, no.
18 (2014): 25-29.

PROBLEM OR ISSUE WITH DIGITAL SIGNATURES 6
As much as there is relevance of the identified issues in the literature, there is also
contradiction found while reviewing the literature as well. The first and foremost issue that has
surfaced as a contradiction with the issue is the way Digital Signature implementation by cloud
for business transactions are considered as one of the safest options to transfer confidential
messages. This has been contradicted by expressing the ways by which Digital Signatures can
prove to be a security threat as well 9. This latest technology has previously been developed to
help the business organizations with the safest possible ways for providing the business
organizations with safe message passing and information sharing. However, the security issues
have proven that this technology also has a huge possibility of completely ruining a business
organization with wrong transfer of messages, along with data mishandling and misplacement
issues. In addition, issues regarding the security of Digital Signatures are the repudiation by one
party of receipt or dispatch of a message. In addition to that, there are also additional threats
regarding the data masking and the hacking of the messages by malicious attackers. The most
trustable source of information sharing and financial transaction bearing technology is also a way
by which there can be impending trust issues between different organizations that have never
dealt with the other regarding business transactions.
Gap in Literature
The ways, by which the literatures under review have been presented, they can be
regarded somewhat as almost perfect informative journals. However, it can further be seen that
the use of the information to provide insights about the importance regarding the use of Digital
Signature in confidential business information transactions have later been identified as the
probable security issues regarding data and information exchange between organizations10.
9 "Survey: Using Multiple Storage Clouds For Data Security On Cloud", International Journal of Science and
Research (IJSR) 4, no. 12 (2015): 724-727.
10 Namita Tiwari, "On The Security Of Pairing-Free Certificateless Digital Signature Schemes Using ECC", ICT
Express 1, no. 2 (2015): 94-95.

PROBLEM OR ISSUE WITH DIGITAL SIGNATURES 7
However, the papers could not provide a solution to these problems, rather than stating only the
issues in the technology used for Digital Signature in Cloud environment for business transaction
and business information.
Inconsistencies in the Literature
The inconsistencies that have been identified in the literatures under review were solely
regarding the contradicting facts that the papers suggested. While there have been identified
issues noted in the papers, the same problems have been regarded as the standout factors for the
Digital Signatures.

PROBLEM OR ISSUE WITH DIGITAL SIGNATURES 8
References
Cao, Hui. "Research On The Security Of The Digital Learning Resources Library Based On
Cloud Storage". Advanced Materials Research 989-994 (2014): 5007-5009.
"DIGITAL SIGNATURE TO SECURE DATA IN CLOUD USING HOMOMORPHIC
ENCRYPTION TECHNIQUE". International Journal of Advance Engineering and Research
Development 3, no. 05 (2016).
Elleithy, Khaled, and Tarek M Sobh. Innovations And Advances In Computer, Information,
Systems Sciences, And Engineering. New York, NY: Springer, 2013.
"Enhancing Security Solutions With Collaborative Cryptography And Digital Signature Scheme
In Cloud Services". International Journal of Modern Trends in Engineering & Research 4, no. 9
(2017): 153-159.
Lv, Xixiang, Yi Mu, and Hui Li. "Loss-Tolerant Authentication With Digital
Signatures". Security and Communication Networks 7, no. 11 (2013): 2054-2062.
Nair, Sreeja, Nupur Gautam, and Meenakshi Choudhary. "Using Kerberos With Digital
Signature And AES Encryption To Provide Data Security In Cloud Computing". International
Journal of Computer Applications 95, no. 18 (2014): 25-29.
"PROVIDING SECURITY WITH BIOMETRIC SYSTEM TO THE HEALTH DATA USING
CLOUD STORAGE". International Journal of Recent Trends in Engineering and
Research (2018): 266-272.
Sugimoto, Masashi. "Cloud Computing Security And Forensics Issues And Awareness Of Cloud
Storage Users In Malaysia". International Journal of Cyber-Security and Digital Forensics 6, no.
1 (2017): 1-13.

PROBLEM OR ISSUE WITH DIGITAL SIGNATURES 9
"Survey: Using Multiple Storage Clouds For Data Security On Cloud". International Journal of
Science and Research (IJSR) 4, no. 12 (2015): 724-727.
Tiwari, Namita. "On The Security Of Pairing-Free Certificateless Digital Signature Schemes
Using ECC". ICT Express 1, no. 2 (2015): 94-95.