Last November, Viafirma participated in the PAdES Remote plugtest Event organized by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). These events are performed remotely and have the aim of interoperability testing and interpretation of the standard defined by ETSI for advanced electronic signatures like XAdES, CAdES, PAdES and ASIC.
The standard defines a series of profiles for PAdES – advanced electronic signatures for PDF documents, which comply with the requirements that the European Directive establishes for a electronic signatures community framework (Directive 1999/93/EC).
Specifically, tests were carried out under the PAdES standard (ETSI TS 102 778 – PDF Advanced Electronic Signature) that allows electronically sign PDF documents.
We’ll briefly define the profiles defined by the standard PAdES (ETSI TS 102 778):
- PAdES Basic – Profile based on ISO 32000-1. This profile specifies a PDF signature as currently specified in ISO 32000-1.
- PAdES Enhanced – PAdES-BES profile. This profiles specifies a PDF advanced signature based upon CAdES-BES as specified in TS 101 733 [2] with the option of a signature time-stamp (CAdES-T).
- PAdES Enhanced – PAdES-EPES profile. This profiles specifies a PDF advanced signature based upon CAdES-EPES as specified in TS 101 733 [2]. This profile is the same as the PAdES – BES profile with the addition of a signature policy identifier and optionally a commitment type indication.
- Long Term – PAdES-LTV Profile. This profile supports the long term validation of PDF Signatures. This profile can be used in conjunction with the PAdES-CMS, PAdES-BES or PAdES-EPES profiles. This profile is applicable to any party relying on a signature over a long period (e.g. longer than the lifetime of the signing certificate). It may be applied by a party receiving and verifying the document or the signing party who should also verify the document when applying LTV.
Today begins the XAdES 2012 Plugtests which we also participate and which aims to carry out test cases for the XAdES standard (TS 101 903), including XAdES (TS 103 171).