A notary web service

Abstract

With the advent of the Internet and the advancement of security technologies, electronic data and e-commerce transactions can now be safely conducted through the Internet. Yet, it is still uneasy to make sure that data is original simply by means of digital signatures since they became unreliable in case of private key compromise. Similarly, it is not an easy job to make sure a legitimate transaction had really been committed at some time without worrying about its integrity. An electronic notary service comes into light to cater for the need for sealing and protecting the concerned electronic data at a physical time such that any further changes made are subjected to detection. Several electronic notary services have already been marketed around the globe; however, the only domestic one was not well-designed with respect to the trust requirement issue. Therefore, it motivates the creation of this project. In this project, various timestamping schemes have been studied and a scheme that is feasible for implementation was picked. We made adaptations from the chosen scheme in order to strive a balance between the theories, usability and implementation cost. The constructed software has a wide variety of uses and extension possibilities. This report covers the detailed solution and its supportive implementation, the decisions and evaluations underwent in working towards a practical Internet-based notary service.