Digital Signature Standard <cryptography, standard> The {NIST}'s {standard} for {digital signatures} (authenticating both a message and the signer) that was first announced in 1991. It is based on an {algorithm} using {discrete logarithms}, which is a variant of the {Elgamal algorithm} with Schnorr's improvements. DSS's security is currently considered very strong - comparable to {RSA}. It is estimated that DSS's 1024-bit keys would take 1.4E16 {MIPS}-years to crack. (1995-11-16)