ITPEC FE Subject A April 2024 Question 31
ITPEC FE Subject A April 2024 — Question 31 of 60
Timestamp service — certifies existence and integrity of electronic data at a specific point in time.
The timestamp service is provided by a trusted third party (TSA — Timestamp Authority). It:
1. Takes a hash of the document
2. Signs it together with the current date/time
3. Returns a token proving the document existed at that moment and hasn't changed since
Why not others:
- (a) Describes biometric authentication — completely unrelated to timestamps
- (c) Describes NTP (Network Time Protocol) — clock synchronization, not data certification
- (d) Describes a time display web service — no integrity guarantee, not a security service
Key rule: Timestamp service = proves a document existed at time T and was unmodified since then.
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