AUTHENTICATION AND ENCRYPTION SOLUTION FOR DOCUMENT STORAGE USING MERKLE HASH TREE, ED25519 DIGITAL SIGNATURE SCHEME AND AES BLOCK CIPHER

Abstract

The processes of authenticating and encrypting documents are tasks that need to be completed immediately and are of the utmost importance in document storage systems that are currently being utilized by corporations and other organizations. This article proposes a solution to authenticate and secure stored documents using a combination of cryptographic techniques, including Merkle tree, Ed25519 elliptic curve digital signature scheme, and the AES block cipher. The purpose of the suggested solution is to achieve the same level of security as the traditional method, which consists of digitally signing and encrypting each document independently, while also providing improved performance. A theoretical and practical comparison of the Python programming language with well-established methods for cryptography and digital signing has provided the evidence necessary to demonstrate these results. Therefore, it is possible to reach the conclusion that this approach has a significant amount of potential for implementing the security of stored documents in practice.