A Reference Model for a Trusted Service Guaranteeing Web-content

Abstract

In this paper we propose a model for a trusted service designed for collecting web information and aiming to guarantee the web content and its presentation format for a long term. The research identifies two usage scenarios: the web content providers that need to prove that certain information was published at a specific moment in time and the end users who visit web pages and may also need to be able to demonstrate later on that certain information was available on-line. The particularities of each scenario are taken into consideration throughout the paper. Both scenarios must tackle a complex problem, related to the dynamic web content, and use long term electronic signature formats (we considered the ETSI’s archiving signature formats) and time stamps, in order to guarantee the integrity and authenticity of the information. In both cases, the archiving of the web content will be conducted exclusively by the proposed trusted service, using strong security mechanisms and protocols that preserve the authenticity, integrity and non-repudiation.