Quote:
Originally Posted by DJ Barney
Hello...
If you download some piece of software it will often have a security key
that you can use to check the integrity of your download.."is all the code
there"...."have any viruses sneaked in ?"
I find it extraordinary that in the "Space Age" with all the controversy
that an image can produce...("is there life there ?", "But Black holes don't
do that!"..."It's a face...it's a face!"...)...that the space agencies, or observatories
don't provide a security key with the image that you can use to check the
integrity of the original image (tif, etc....).
Of course...most people wouldn't use them...but if you're a researcher
with some ground breaking theory that some other researcher MIGHT
feed you false data on ? Not that anyone would. But no one is supposed
to introduce viruses into software!
DJBarney
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The kind of security key you are advocating doesn't give you any protection from falsified or manipulated data from the source. At best, it only allows you to determine that the data was not modified by a third party. A nefarious researcher could falsify data and then digitally sign the falsified data. There is no way for you to know that this was done.
A security signature lets you know that the data you received from the researcher is what the researcher had published, but it doesn't allow you to detect manipulation before the signature was generated.