EVP_DIGESTVERIFYINIT(3)

NAME
EVP_DigestVerifyInit, EVP_DigestVerifyUpdate, EVP_DigestVerifyFinal - EVP signature verification functions

SYNOPSIS
#include <openssl/evp.h>
int
EVP_DigestVerifyInit(EVP_MD_CTX *ctx, EVP_PKEY_CTX **pctx, const EVP_MD *type, ENGINE *e, EVP_PKEY *pkey);
int
EVP_DigestVerifyUpdate(EVP_MD_CTX *ctx, const void *d, size_t cnt);
int
EVP_DigestVerifyFinal(EVP_MD_CTX *ctx, unsigned char *sig, size_t siglen);

DESCRIPTION
The EVP signature routines are a high level interface to digital signatures.

EVP_DigestVerifyInit() sets up verification context ctx to use digest type from ENGINE e and public key pkey. ctx must be initialized with EVP_MD_CTX_init(3) before calling this function. If pctx is not NULL, the EVP_PKEY_CTX of the verification operation will be written to *pctx: this can be used to set alternative verification options.

EVP_DigestVerifyUpdate() hashes cnt bytes of data at d into the verification context ctx. This function can be called several times on the same ctx to include additional data. This function is currently implemented using a macro.

EVP_DigestVerifyFinal() verifies the data in ctx against the signature in sig of length siglen.

The EVP interface to digital signatures should almost always be used in preference to the low level interfaces. This is because the code then becomes transparent to the algorithm used and much more flexible.

In previous versions of OpenSSL, there was a link between message digest types and public key algorithms. This meant that "clone" digests such as EVP_dss1(3) needed to be used to sign using SHA1 and DSA. This is no longer necessary and the use of clone digest is now discouraged.

The call to EVP_DigestVerifyFinal() internally finalizes a copy of the digest context. This means that EVP_VerifyUpdate(3) and EVP_VerifyFinal(3) can be called later to digest and verify additional data.

Since only a copy of the digest context is ever finalized, the context must be cleaned up after use by calling EVP_MD_CTX_cleanup(3) or a memory leak will occur.

RETURN VALUES
EVP_DigestVerifyInit() and EVP_DigestVerifyUpdate() return 1 for success and 0 or a negative value for failure. In particular a return value of -2 indicates the operation is not supported by the public key algorithm.

EVP_DigestVerifyFinal() returns 1 for success; any other value indicates failure. A return value of 0 indicates that the signature did not verify successfully (that is, the signature did not match the original data or the signature had an invalid form), while other values indicate a more serious error (and sometimes also indicate an invalid signature form).

The error codes can be obtained from ERR_get_error(3).

SEE ALSO
ERR(3), evp(3), EVP_DigestInit(3), EVP_DigestSignInit(3)

HISTORY
EVP_DigestVerifyInit(), EVP_DigestVerifyUpdate(), and EVP_DigestVerifyFinal() were first added to OpenSSL 1.0.0.