Digital Sigs?

I read in yesterday's L.A. Times about something called CommerceNet, where sellers and buyers of workstation level equipment can meet and conduct busniess. Near the end of the article, they talked about a proposed method for exchanging "digital signatures" via Moasic (so that buyers and sellers could _know_ that they were who they said they were) and that they were going to "submit it to the Internet Standards body" Is this something new, or am I way gone on this one? Cyph1@aol.com