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by huhtenberg
1479 days ago
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> I’d like to add that one should be aware that such timestamps are only valid until the TSA certificate expires (or is revoked). This is simply not true. More precisely, it depends on the definition of "valid", but conventionally the death of a notary doesn't invalidate their notarizations. |
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Of course, after a risk assessment you may still decide to treat an expired signature (timestamp) as valid in a concrete case, but it would be a questionable practice to do so in general for an automated validation procedure. It would effectively mean that you ignore the expiration date of certificates and treat them as being valid indefinitely. Those expiry dates exist precisely to contain the risk of fraudulent key use. Accepting signatures after certificate expiration without having proof of when the signatures were created completely undermines that mechanism.
An additional issue is that CAs are not required to maintain and publish revocation information (via CRL/OCSP) for expired certificates, which means that in general you lose the ability to even check the certificate for revocation. This is why AdES formats provide the ability to store revocation information with the signature (and also timestamps). Of course, to make use of revocation information you have to validate the CRL/OCSP signatures, which in the long run again requires adding timestamps covering those.