An abstract class that bundles signature creation (PKey#sign) and validation (PKey#verify) that is common to all implementations except OpenSSL::PKey::DH

Class Methods

Because PKey is an abstract class, actually calling this method explicitly will raise a NotImplementedError.

Instance Methods

To sign the String data, digest, an instance of OpenSSL::Digest, must be provided. The return value is again a String containing the signature. A PKeyError is raised should errors occur. Any previous state of the Digest instance is irrelevant to the signature outcome, the digest instance is reset to its initial state during the operation.

Example

data = 'Sign me!'
digest = OpenSSL::Digest::SHA256.new
pkey = OpenSSL::PKey::RSA.new(2048)
signature = pkey.sign(digest, data)

To verify the String signature, digest, an instance of OpenSSL::Digest, must be provided to re-compute the message digest of the original data, also a String. The return value is true if the signature is valid, false otherwise. A PKeyError is raised should errors occur. Any previous state of the Digest instance is irrelevant to the validation outcome, the digest instance is reset to its initial state during the operation.

Example

data = 'Sign me!'
digest = OpenSSL::Digest::SHA256.new
pkey = OpenSSL::PKey::RSA.new(2048)
signature = pkey.sign(digest, data)
pub_key = pkey.public_key
puts pub_key.verify(digest, signature, data) # => true