When I'm verifying the signature, I'm getting the following exception,

Not sure what it means and why the exception is happening, I'm using the same latest code provided in the book examples. Could you highlight what could be wrong? I'm able to create the signature file, this part fails when it tries to verify the signature.

java.security.SignatureException: java.lang.ArithmeticException: BigInteger not invertible


Caused by:
java.lang.ArithmeticException: BigInteger not invertible.
at java.math.MutableBigInteger.modInverse(MutableBigI nteger.java:1239)
at java.math.MutableBigInteger.mutableModInverse(Muta bleBigInteger.java:1114)
at java.math.BigInteger.modInverse(BigInteger.java:20 23)
at org.bouncycastle.crypto.signers.DSASigner.verifySi gnature(Unknown Source)
at org.bouncycastle.jce.provider.JDKDSASigner.engineV erify(Unknown Source)
at java.security.Signature$Delegate.engineVerify(Sign ature.java:1194)
at java.security.Signature.verify(Signature.java:647)

Looking at it I'd say the key was invalid. You might need to check that all the numbers have gone in in the right order.

Regards,

David

Thanks David, You are correct the key was invalid. But the error message is not intuitive enough to say the key is invalid.

Is there any catch that signals the key may be invalid?

I'd say in this case the exception should probably be wrapped in a SignatureException. I'll add that to the BC jira. Having said that you could pass in an invalid key which won't cause an exception, just fail to verify the signature (at the end of the day, verification is just a series of big integer operations...) so this is really one of those places where you just have to be careful.

Regards,

David

Thanks. I was surprised to see, creation of signature worked fine with invalid key. But the verification of signature is throwing this exception. And chances of throwing exception 1 in 3 times.

Yep, that sounds about right. As I mentioned earlier, with BigInteger algorithms it all depends how the maths works out as to what happens if a key is wrong.

Regards,

David