3. What do you understand by a digital signature?

Explain its application and verification

diagrammatically.

A digital signature or digital signature scheme is a mathematical scheme for demonstrating the
authenticity of a digital message or document. A valid digital signature gives a recipient reason
to believe that the message was created by a known sender, and that it was not altered in transit.
Digital signatures are commonly used for software distribution, financial transactions, and in
other cases where it is important to detect forgery or tampering.

Digital signatures are often used to implement electronic signatures, a broader term that refers to
any electronic data that carries the intent of a signature, but not all electronic signatures use
digital signatures. In some countries, including the United States, India, and members of the
European Union, electronic signatures have legal significance. However, laws concerning
electronic signatures do not always make clear whether they are digital cryptographic signatures
in the sense used here, leaving the legal definition, and so their importance, somewhat confused.

Digital signatures employ a type of asymmetric cryptography. For messages sent through a
nonsecure channel, a properly implemented digital signature gives the receiver reason to believe
the message was sent by the claimed sender. Digital signatures are equivalent to traditional
handwritten signatures in many respects; properly implemented digital signatures are more
difficult to forge than the handwritten type. Digital signature schemes in the sense used here are
cryptographically based, and must be implemented properly to be effective. Digital signatures
can also provide non-repudiation, meaning that the signer cannot successfully claim they did not
sign a message, while also claiming their private key remains secret; further, some non-
repudiation schemes offer a time stamp for the digital signature, so that even if the private key is
exposed, the signature is valid nonetheless. Digitally signed messages may be anything
representable as a bitstring: examples include electronic mail, contracts, or a message sent via
some other cryptographic protocol.

A digital signature (not to be confused with a digital certificate) is an electronic signature that
can be used to authenticate the identity of the sender of a message or the signer of a document,
and possibly to ensure that the original content of the message or document that has been sent is
unchanged. Digital signatures are easily transportable, cannot be imitated by someone else, and
can be automatically time-stamped. The ability to ensure that the original signed message arrived
means that the sender cannot easily repudiate it later.

A digital signature can be used with any kind of message, whether it is encrypted or not, simply
so that the receiver can be sure of the sender's identity and that the message arrived intact. A
digital certificate contains the digital signature of the certificate-issuing authority so that anyone
can verify that the certificate is real.

Working
Assume you were going to send the draft of a contract to your lawyer in another town. You want
to give your lawyer the assurance that it was unchanged from what you sent and that it is really
from you.
You copy-and-paste the contract (it's a short one!) into an e-mail note.
Using special software, you obtain a message hash (mathematical summary) of the contract.
You then use a private key that you have previously obtained from a public-private key authority
to encrypt the hash.

4. WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THE DOMAIN NAME SYSTEM (DNS)?

The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical naming system built on a distributed database
for computers, services, or any resource connected to the Internet or a private network. Most
importantly, it translates domain names meaningful to humans into the numerical identifiers
associated with networking equipment for the purpose of locating and addressing these devices
worldwide.

An often-used analogy to explain the Domain Name System is that it serves as the phone book
for the Internet by translating human-friendly computer hostnames into IP addresses. For
example, the domain name www.example.com translates to the addresses 192.0.32.10 (IPv4) and
2620:0:2d0:200::10 (IPv6).

The Domain Name System makes it possible to assign domain names to groups of Internet
resources and users in a meaningful way, independent of each entity's physical location. Because
of this, World Wide Web (WWW) hyperlinks and Internet contact information can remain
consistent and constant even if the current Internet routing arrangements change or the
participant uses a mobile device. Internet domain names are easier to remember than IP
addresses such as 208.77.188.166 (IPv4) or 2001:db8:1f70::999:de8:7648:6e8 (IPv6). Users
take advantage of this when they recite meaningful Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) and e-
mail addresses without having to know how the computer actually locates them.

The Domain Name System distributes the responsibility of assigning domain names and
mapping those names to IP addresses by designating authoritative name servers for each domain.
Authoritative name servers are assigned to be responsible for their particular domains, and in
turn can assign other authoritative name servers for their sub-domains. This mechanism has
made the DNS distributed and fault tolerant and has helped avoid the need for a single central
register to be continually consulted and updated. In general, the Domain Name System also
stores other types of information, such as the list of mail servers that accept email for a given
Internet domain. By providing a worldwide, distributed keyword-based redirection service, the
Domain Name System is an essential component of the functionality of the Internet.

A DNS sever is where the computer goes to translate a web address that you type in into a series
of numbers and goes to that address. So basically you type www.amityonline.com into Internet
Explorer (or any other web browser, it works in exactly the same way). The browser goes to a
DNS server either you've specified or it has been given. It converts amityonline.com into a series
of numbers, in this case 72.232.135.12 and goes there. When you specify DNS servers in the
fashion you have, this is the order they're referred to when looking up IP addresses. Basically
you go to a web site; the computer asks (in your case) the server at 208.67.222.222 for the proper
number. If this server doesn't give a number (for example because it’s overloaded with requests
or offline or generally not working) then the computer will ask the server at 208.67.220.220 for
the site's IP. Then it just claims there is no page to find. You can add as many DNS servers as
you like, the computer will just work its way down the list trying to find a requested site's proper
address before timing out. A common scenario when connected to a provider is that the provider
is so busy with its user-base the DNS servers get overloaded. So you can connect but you can't
go anywhere.

Name System or DNS: it makes browsing the Web simpler and more intuitive. It allows the tens
of millions of computers connected to the Internet to find one another and communicate
efficiently. DNS also allows individual nations to identify and optimize their websites for local
populations, according to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

Hierarchies: Domain names are grouped into a series of top-level domains or TLDs such as
.com, .net, .org and .gov. In addition, every country has its own TLD: for example, the TLD for
the United States is ".us"; ".fr" represents France, ".in" denotes India, and so on. The TLD
appears at the end of the full domain name.

Second-level domain: It contains the name of the website. For example, in "ehow.com", the
second-level domain name is "ehow". The third-level domain, which appears at the beginning of
some domain names, was used in the early days of the World Wide Web to signify that the
domain was either a website (represented by ".www") or a file transfer site (".ftp"). The third-
level domain is now used to signify any sub-domain, which is often just a sub-section of a
particular website.

Convenience: Without DNS, people wishing to access a particular online resource would have
to know the IP address or would be required to look it up. The IP address is a cumbersome series
of three-digit numbers separated by dots or decimal points. The DNS system automatically
converts these long numbers into convenient domain names that humans can easily use and
remember.

Optimized Service: The top-level domain often indicates the nation of origin through a two-
character abbreviation. The ability to recognized websites by country allows national registry
operators to apply the best mix of linguistic and cultural policies for those domains, thereby
optimizing websites for convenient access by users in each nation

5.What is the most valuable function of the proxy server?

A proxy server is a dedicated computer or a software system running on a computer that acts as
an intermediary between an endpoint device, such as a computer, and another server from which
a user or client is requesting a service. The proxy server may exist in the same machine as a
firewall server or it may be on a separate server, which forwards requests through the firewall.

An advantage of a proxy server is that its cache can serve all users. If one or more Internet sites
are frequently requested, these are likely to be in the proxy's cache, which will improve user
response time. A proxy can also log its interactions, which can be helpful for troubleshooting.
Functions:

Networking

In some cases, a proxy server may be required due to your networking configuration. If you have
multiple PCs in your home, the router provided by your Internet service provider serves as a sort
of proxy for your system. All outgoing traffic first travels to the router, which serves as your
connection to the outside world. From the perspective of the Internet, all your traffic seems to
come from a single IP address, no matter how many machines you connect on your side of the
router.

Access Control

In some cases, a proxy may serve as a central node for logging or filtering Internet traffic. A
company may route all traffic through an internal proxy in order to prevent users from accessing
sites that are not work related and many even contain inappropriate content, as well as to record
the activities of its users online. A proxy may also require a username and password for Internet
access, preventing unauthorized users from spending time online on non-company business. A
proxy server can also cache commonly accessed resources, reducing the amount of network
traffic and improving

Anonymity

Since all traffic routed through a proxy appears to originate from that proxy, some users take
advantage of this system for anonymity purposes. Using an external proxy can make it difficult
for a third party to track your activities online. It is important to note, however, that the owner of
a proxy can easily monitor activity that passes through it, so using an insecure proxy may open
you up to many security risks. In addition, since your Web traffic must travel to the proxy server
before it can navigate to the target server, this setup can introduce considerable amounts of
latency and slow down your browsing session.

International Proxies

Proxies are also useful when you're dealing with international restrictions. Some websites alter
the content they provide based on the user’s home country, and using an international proxy that
masks your country of origin can help bypass those restrictions. In extreme cases, users in
countries that censor the Internet can use international proxies to access banned content, and
free-speech advocates and activists can use the anonymity provided by proxies to share
information freely with other users.