Timestamp

Timestamps, issued by Time Stamp Authorities (TSA) as timestamp tokens, provide evidence that an electronic form, email, or other electronic transaction existed at a particular time. A timestamp token is the combination of hashed data received from a client and a timestamp (a statement of time obtained from the system clock or other source), both signed by the TSA or timestamp service.

The Toolkit supports timestamping and verifying timestamped data encrypted and/or signed using CMS, PKCS #7, or S/MIME version 2 or 3. Timestamp verification ensures that the timestamped data has not been modified since it was timestamped and that the TSA that issued the timestamp can be trusted. The Toolkit implements the client side of the Timestamp protocol, as defined in RFC3161. For further information, refer to:

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3161.txt

The Toolkit enables communication with a TSA such as Entrust Verification Server or any third-party timestamp service that implements the server side of the Timestamp protocol using HTTP as the only timestamp transport mechanism currently implemented.