Digital certificates: What is the difference between encrypting and signing

Question

I am relatively new to PKI, certificates and all related stuff.

As far as I understand in public-key cryptography one encrypt with a public key and decrypt with a pr

Answer 1

Any private key has one public key and any public key has one private key its always one to one mapping.

Signing the message is only create a finger print for the message just to make sure that the content hasn't been altered, but it has no effect on the message it self and the message will never be encrypted.

While encrypting the message will do the encryption. you can encrypt a message and sign it at the same time.