Digital Signature Algorithm
published by NIST in the Digital Signature Standard ( DSS ), which is a part of the U.S. government's Capstone project. DSS was selected by NIST, in cooperation with the NSA , to be the digital authentication standard of the U.S. government. The standard was issued in May 1994.
DSA is based on the discrete logarithm problem and is related to signature schemes that were proposed by Schnorr and ElGamal.
the DSA can only be used to provide digital signatures.