
Apple patents technology that will allow authors to sign ebooks - yk
http://www.mhpbooks.com/apple-patents-technology-that-will-allow-authors-to-sign-ebooks/
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jloughry
I implemented something like this once. The trick is embedding the digital
signature into an ebook file format that was not designed to accept it. For
instance, the following method is secure, but the result doesn't look like an
ebook:

1\. I email the author my public key.

2\. The author hashes a copy of the ebook, signs the hash with his/her private
key, and puts the resulting PKCS #7 file on a web server or emails it back to
me.

What is needed is an extensible ebook format (or a permissive one like JPEG
that lets you append arbitrary data to the file without corrupting it).

