Micro RFC 3161 Time-Stamp server written in C.
| Doc: | Uts-Server documentation on ReadTheDoc |
|---|---|
| Dev: | Uts-Server source code on GitHub |
| License: | MIT |
| Author: | Pierre-Francois Carpentier - copyright © 2016 |
Released under the MIT Public License
An RFC 3161 time-stamp is basically a cryptographic signature with a date attached.
Roughly, it works as follow:
- A client application sends an hash of the data it wants to time-stamp to a Time-Stamp authority server.
- The Time-Stamp authority server retrieves the current date, concatenates it with the hash and uses its private key to create the time-stamp (kind of like a signature).
- The Time-Stamp authority server returns the generated time-stamp to the client application.
Then a client can verify the piece of data with the time-stamp using the Certificate Authority of the time-stamp key pair (X509 certificates).
It gives a cryptographic proof of a piece of data content, like a file, at a given time.
Some use cases:
- time-stamp log files at rotation time.
- time-stamp file at upload to prove it was delivered in due time or not.
Here a few steps to quickly trying out uts-server, for production setup, please compile civetweb externally and create proper CA and certificates:
# Building with civetweb embedded (will recover civetweb from github).
# Note: the BUNDLE_CIVETWEB option is only here for fast testing purpose
# The recommended way to deploy uts-server in production is to build civetweb
# separatly and to link against it.
$ cmake . -DBUNDLE_CIVETWEB=ON
$ make
# Create some test certificates.
$ ./tests/cfg/pki/create_tsa_certs
# Launching the time-stamp server with test configuration in debug mode.
$ ./uts-server -c tests/cfg/uts-server.cnf -D
# In another shell, launching a time-stamp script on the README.md file.
$ ./goodies/timestamp-file.sh -i README.rst -u http://localhost:2020 -r -O "-cert";
# Verify the time-stamp.
$ openssl ts -verify -in README.rst.tsr -data README.rst -CAfile ./tests/cfg/pki/tsaca.pem
# Display the time-stamp content.
$ openssl ts -reply -in README.rst.tsr -text
