 
 
Digital Signature Standard (cryptography, standard)    The NIST's standard for digital signatures (authenticating both a message and the signer) that was first announced in 1991.  It is based on an algorithm using discrete logarithms, which is a variant of the Elgamal algorithm with Schnorr's improvements.  DSS's security is currently considered very strong - comparable to RSA.  It is estimated that DSS's 1024-bit keys would take 1.4E16 MIPS-years to crack. 
Last updated: 1995-11-16