Understanding Public-Key Infrastructure: Concepts, Standards, and Deployment Considerations

Non-Repudiation

Non-repudiation is the term used for the service that assures, to the extent technically possible, that entities remain honest about their actions. The most commonly discussed variants are non-repudiation of origin (in which a wser cannot falsely deny having originated a message or document) and non-repudiation of receipt (in which a user cannot falsely deny having received a message or document). However, a number of other variants have been defined, including non-repudiation of creation, non-repudiation of delivery, and non-repudiation of approval. The basic idea is that a user is cryptographically bound to a specific action in such a way that subsequent denial of that action, to some extent, constitutes an admission of malice ...