Non-Repudiation is a method of guaranteeing message transmission between parties via digital signature and/or encryption. It is one of the five pillars of information assurance (IA). The other four are availability, integrity, confidentiality and authentication. The term is often seen in a legal setting wherein the authenticity of a signature is being challenged. In such an instance, the authenticity is being “repudiated”.

Nonrepudiation is often used for digital contracts, signatures and email messages.

By using a data hash, proof of authentic identifying data and data origination can be obtained. Along with digital signatures, public keys can be a problem when it comes to nonrepudiation if the message recipient has exposed, either knowingly or unknowingly, their encrypted or secret key.

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