Re: [openpgp] Timestamping

[Peter Todd <[e-mail]>]

On Fri, May 03, 2013 at 08:06:43PM +0100, Ben Laurie wrote:
> You might be interested in Certificate Transparency:
> http://www.links.org/files/CertificateTransparencyVersion2.1a.pdf

I think I've read that paper before actually, or perhaps the EFF's
version, but yes, CA transparency schemes are interesting to me and I
think they too could benefit from timestamping as an additional source
of auditing.

Bitcoin in particular I find interesting because it's the first
trustworthy *decentralized* timestamping scheme to be created. Its
timestamps aren't particularly accurate - Bitcoin has a rule where every
node accepts blocks with a timestamp less than 2 hours ahead of what it
believes the time is - but they can be used in conjunction with other
centralized timestamping schemes to give the guarantee that if the
timestamp was faked, it was at least done so in the past!

Obviously the same guarantee is useful for CA auditing, but I'm probably
getting off-topic here...

-- 
'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org
000000000000001e37401431b5d24c5f798773655e7fe23cc6bbe3a6a871e492