Transient-key cryptography: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 19:04, 10 August 2016

Revision as of 17:11, 26 February 2017

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Instead, data is digitally signed with a time value derived from [[Universal Coordinated Time|Universal Coordinated Time (UTC)]] accurate to within a millisecond, in accordance with the [[ANSI ASC X9.95 Standard|ANSI ASC X9.95 standard for Trusted Timestamping]].

Whenever a time interval in a transient-key system expires, a new public/private keypair is generated, and the private key from the previous interval is used to digitally certify the new public key. The old private key is then destroyed.

For the new interval, time values are obtained from a trusted third-party source, and specific moments in time can be [[interpolated]] in between received times by using a time-biasing method based on the internal system timer. If a trusted time source cannot be obtained or is not running within specified [[Tolerance (Engineering) tolerance|tolerances]], transient private keys are not issued. In that case, the time interval chain is terminated, and a fresh one is begun. The old and new chains are connected through network archives, which enable all servers to continue to verify the [[data integrity]] through time of protected data, regardless of how often the chain must be restarted.

The start times of the chain and of each interval can be coupled together to form an unbroken sequence of public keys, which can be used for the following:

* To irrefutably identify the time at which a set of data was signed.