YEARS OF EUROPEAN ONLINE ANNÉES DE EN LIGNE ...

signatures usually have a limited time of validity. the challenge of renewal of
signatures will be signiicant in the coming years.
the third challenge is related to reform and data transfer. Electronic signatures
break when changing the document format. technological developments,
harmonisation attempts and also new legal guidelines cause changes of
user data and signature formats over the years. with electronically signed documents,
format changes are problematical, since changing the format breaks the
original signature. A similar problem arises during the digitalisation of paper
documents. If, for instance, a document signed by hand is digitised, the signature
loses its validity. the legal authenticity of the transformed document is at
least doubtful.
Practices
FRANCE
two types of electronic signatures are used in the chain of conidence.
XAdES is used in most cases with a higher level of authentication as a nonintrusive
signature, and PDf(#PKCS7) as an intrusive signature.
A time stamp for the XAdES texts can extend the certiicate period of
validity (beyond the initial two years), in accordance with the RfC 1305 Network
time Protocol and the speciic time-stamp protocol RfC 3161 Internet
X509 PKI time-Stamp Protocol (tSP). In france the software of choice for
managing the time stamp has been nCipher Appliance. It includes a new tool
to ‘re-sign’ the texts at the end of validity of the certiicate.
A Crypto Box is used to keep secure the private keys for the publication’s
signature. (these keys are not personal keys but bear the name of the oficial
gazette.)
AUSTRIA
An XmL-based digital signature has been used since 2004. the documents
leaving the secure worklow will be
signed electronically on an XmL
basis, using XmL-DSIG. It is a serverbased
electronic signature by the
federal Chancellery.
An example of the use of qualiied
electronic signature is in the
Austrian database of authentic legislation
(BGBL Autentisch), where four
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