DSC
Definition
Digital Signature Certificate. An Indian X.509 certificate issued by a CCA-licensed CA. Class 3 is the current mandatory tier for income tax, GST, MCA and GeM filings; Class 2 was phased out from January 2021.
- Full name
- Digital Signature Certificate
- Jurisdiction
- India
- Standard
- X.509 certificate
- Issued by
- CCA-licensed Certifying Authority
- Current mandatory tier
- Class 3, for income tax, GST, MCA, GeM filings
Common questions
Why does the phase-out of Class 2 certificates matter for digital evidence cases?+
A document or filing signed with a Class 2 certificate before its January 2021 phase-out remains a valid record for that period, but an examiner verifying signature validity needs to check the certificate class and issuance date against the applicable rules in force at the time, not current requirements, when assessing an older signed document.
What role does a DSC play in establishing electronic evidence integrity in Indian proceedings?+
A valid DSC provides cryptographic proof of the signer's identity and that the signed document has not been altered since signing, which supports admissibility under India's electronic evidence framework by substituting for a handwritten signature and offering tamper-evidence that plain electronic files lack.
Related terms
- Asymmetric Cryptography
- Cryptosystem that uses a key pair: a public key (shareable) and a private key (secret). Built on mathematical trapdoor functions where the...
- Digital Signature
- Cryptographic proof of authenticity, integrity and non-repudiation. Sign by encrypting a hash of the message with the signer's private key; verify by...
- ECC
- Elliptic Curve Cryptography. Smaller keys for equivalent security; 256-bit ECC is roughly equivalent to 3072-bit RSA. Used in ECDSA signatures, ECDH key...
- Hash Function
- Deterministic function that maps an input of arbitrary length to a fixed-length output. A cryptographic hash adds pre-image resistance, second pre-image resistance,...
- HMAC
- Hash-based Message Authentication Code, RFC 2104. Combines a secret key with a hash function to produce a MAC; immune to the length-extension...
- PKI
- Public Key Infrastructure. The set of roles (CA, RA, VA) and artefacts (X.509 certificates, CRL, OCSP) that bind a public key to...
- RSA
- Rivest-Shamir-Adleman, 1977. Public-key cryptosystem based on the hardness of factoring a product of two large primes. Common sizes today: 2048-bit (standard), 3072-bit...
- Trapdoor Function
- A one-way function with a secret 'trapdoor' that makes the reverse direction tractable. RSA's trapdoor is the factorisation of n into p...