In a public key signature system, a person can combine a message with a private key to create a short digital signature on the message. Anyone with the corresponding public key can combine a message, a putative digital signature on it, and the known public key to verify whether the signature was valid, i.e. made by the owner of the corresponding private key. Changing the message, even replacing a single letter, will cause verification to fail. In a secure signature system, it is computationally infeasible for anyone who does not know the private key to deduce it from the public key or any number of signatures, or to find a valid signature on any message for which a signature has not hitherto been seen. Thus the authenticity of a message can be demonstrated by the signature, provided the owner of the private key keeps the private key secret.
the combination of a public key and a private key is known as a
digital signature digital signature