A survey of the problems of time-stamping or why it is necessary to have another time-stamping scheme

One of the most important problems users of digital signatures are facing is establishing the exact moment the signature was created. Because many non-repudiation and authentication services require this capacity, it is very important to deliver trustworthy and secure time-stamping services. But what is the real importance of time-stamping? Is it possible to deliver secure time-stamp services based on the protocols known today? If not, what other protocols are needed to achieve this task? This paper presents some of the problems that time-stamping techniques are confronted with and tries to put the advantages and disadvantages of the different available time-stamping schemes in perspective. The paper also aims to propose one possibility to overcome the current dead-end in achieving highly secure time-stamping schemes.

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