Last Modified: 2004-02-18
Long-term non-repudiation of digitally signed data is an important aspect of PKI-related standards. Standard mechanisms are needed to handle routine events, such as expiry of signer's public key certificate and expiry of trusted time stamp authority certificate. A single timestamp is not sufficient for this purpose. Additionally, the reliable preservation of content across change of formats, application of electronic notarizations, and subsequent notary services require standard solutions.
The objective of the LTANS working group is to define requirements, data structures and protocols for the secure usage of the necessary archive and notary services. First, the requirements for the long-term archive will be collected. Based on that information we will develop a protocol to access archive services supplying long-term non-repudiation for signed documents and define common data structures and formats. Upon completion of the archive-related specifications, we will address 'notary services' in a similar way. The term 'notary services' is not clearly defined. The working group will determine which functions need standards, including transformation of documents from one format to another without losing the value of evidence, electronic notarization, and further verification of legal validity of signed documents. We will determine the needs via the requirements paper and act upon the results accordingly.
Work done by the IETF Working Groups PKIX, S/MIME and XMLDSIG will be used as the basis to define those structures and protocols. For example, the Internet-Drafts 'Archive Time-Stamps Syntax (ATS)' and 'Trusted Archive Protocol (TAP)' and RFC 3029, 'Data Validation and Certificate Server Protocols (DVCS)', contain applicable concepts.
Done | Initial requirements for long-term archive I-D | |
Dec 03 | Initial protocol for long-term archive I-D | |
Done | Revised requirements for long-term archive I-D | |
Done | Initial data structures for long-term archive I-D | |
Feb 04 | Last call requirements for long-term archive I-D | |
Mar 04 | Submit requirements for long-term archive to IESG as informational | |
Mar 04 | Revised data structures for long-term archive I-D | |
Mar 04 | Revised protocol for long-term archive I-D | |
Apr 04 | Last call data structures for long-term archive I-D | |
Apr 04 | Last call protocol for long-term archive I-D | |
May 04 | Submit data structures for long-term archive to IESG as proposed standard | |
May 04 | Submit protocol for long-term archive to IESG as proposed standard | |
Jul 04 | Initial requirements for notary services I-D | |
Sep 04 | Revised requirements for notary services I-D | |
Sep 04 | Last call requirements for notary services I-D | |
Dec 04 | Submit requirements for notary services to IESG as proposed standard |
LTANS WG Meeting Minutes (59th IETF) WG Summary 11:04-11:09 : Santosh See LTANS WG Status Summary ppt for the agenda and schedule - no additional items to agenda were added by the participants - a little behind in schedule LTANS Requirements 11:10 11:26: Santosh See LTANS Requirements-summary ppt - timestamps [Larry] requirements does not call for 3161, so should not be an issue for requirements [Russ] we should be ok with what the current doc says, in regards to patents - emulator Suggestion was to permit including applications that were used to generate the archived data and/or can be used to view the data as part of requirement - long-term identification, authentication, and authorization: How to define this over such a long time. Some suggested that it be discussed as part of requirements [Santosh] this could be part of signed or unsigned attributes, as part of metadata. We dont want to mandate it in the protocol, leave optional [Stefan]Authentication of access, and policies on information objects, XML work XRML in OASIS [Santosh and Larry] this does not deals with long term I&A and authorization issues. - New comments from the floor Need to separate out archive service requirements and archive protocol requirements. No major ERS - Suggestion was to use multiple hash trees (using different hash algs) - [Larry] Why do we need the hash trees at all - [Larry] Security considerations sections should address the time based threats and need to re-hash. Protocol 11:53 12:45 Santosh for Peter and Alex - summary of protocol doc from Peter, Alex and Carl - [Larry] This 6 step infrastructure is confusing. - [Larry] Is what to audit a protocol concern or a policy issue? If it is a protocol concern, then protocol should include audit service related objects/functions. - In response to question, should replay attacks and idemtpotence be handled in the protocol, [Larry] Protocol should protect against all security threats that exist. But without a clearly defined threat model, this is tough to determine. - [Larry] There seems to be some presumptions in slides. Does URI allow anonymous access and how can someone get access to someone elses archived data. - [Santosh in response to the above]: It is assumed that both URI and TAA access will require appropriate I&A and Authorization checks. But, this points to additional requirements on the protocol - [Larry] Some metadata should also be archived. If the archived metadata can change, that points to the need to apply security services at the TAA for data and metadata separately. - [Brian] We need to have some sort of definition of what metadata will be. - [Santosh] We have defined some examples, and leave it open for adding new metadata types. This provides extensibility. - [Larry] Slide 12: Initiate searches is concerning. Proper scoping of the searching language in the protocol should occur. - Slide 13: Not sure of the intent of the integrity comments. - [Santosh] Decision of whether link hashing should be pursued needs to be first discussed off-list. - [Santosh] Should archival service be agnostic to signed data objects? - [Brian] Archive service should not validate signed data objects. - [Santosh] I agree. - [Larry] Is the index to the archived data object part of the protocol? - [Larry] Internal archive service operations should be hidden from client, should be opaque. In the long term, this architecture will change and not suitable for a client to know. - [Santosh] We agree. But there are some advantages of giving back a hint to retrieve the document, or evidence record. - [Larry] As long as they are hints and not tied to how the service performs its function, we are fine. - [Santosh] I find their proposal good in terms of the three classes of transaction Other comments - [Larry] I dont know whether the results of these efforts will be sufficient for a long term archival. I dont see the threat analysis being properly discussed. - [Santosh] I think we did a deep security consideration in the TAP Feb 2003, which give a coverage of the threat analysis, for the protocol and data structure. - [Larry] Long term issues such as loss of identity are not covered. - [Santosh] True. Those are not yet covered. If there are holes in the current threat analysis, please bring it up. - [Larry, off-line] May be instead of this n of m (Shamir splitting) technique should be |