DESCRIPTION
The Xetex XSigner™ is an ActiveX control that enables you to sign text strings from within Internet Explorer using the Microsoft Crypto API. XSigner™ takes a text string (a contract, email or any other piece of text requiring authentication) and uses Microsoft's Crypto API to access the system certificate store to retrieve all certificates, sign the text with the user's chosen certificate and generate a PKCS7 containing the signed data. The signed data is returned from the control as a Base64 encoded string.

REQUIREMENTS
In order to use the ActiveX control, you must have Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher, and Windows 98, NT 4.0, Windows 2000 or Windows Millenium Edition.

DEMONSTRATION
A demonstration of the XSigner™ tool is available.

DOWNLOAD
The download package contains the XSigner™ ActiveX control, license, and usage documentation.
Read License and Download [ XSigner.zip, 36 KB ]

USAGE
The XSigner™ is invoked with a VBScript similar to the following script:

<OBJECT ID=XSigner CODEBASE=XSigner.cab
CLASSID="CLSID:63849D57-928A-492B-A4E0-8E76F70F3E54">
</OBJECT>

<FORM NAME=signingForm ACTION=verifysig.cgi METHOD=post>
<INPUT TYPE=hidden NAME=signed>

<SCRIPT language=VBScript>
dim theForm
set theForm = Document.forms("signingForm")
XSigner.StringToSign="This is the text to be signed."
XSigner.Sign
theForm.signed.value = XSigner.SignedString
<\SCRIPT>

<\FORM>

The VBScript above does the following:

•  Invokes the ActiveX Control with the <OBJECT> tag and the correct ID, CODEBASE and CLASSID properties.

•  Set the StringToSign property with the value of the string to be signed.

•  Calls XSigner.Sign

•  Retrieves the value of the signed and encoded text string from the SignedString property.

•  Saves the value to a form variable. This step is not necessary, but shows how the result could be submitted to a CGI program. The script could be modified to retrieve the text to be signed from a form element rather than being hard coded into the script. Similarly, the script could be modified so that it does not use a form at all.

DOCUMENTATION
For a more detailed overview of using the XSigner™, see the documentation provided with the download:

•  A Guide to Using the Xetex XSigner™
•  A Guide to ActiveX and Crypto API Programming

FEEDBACK
Please send comments, suggestions, questions, or bug reports to xsigner@xetex.com