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How to time-stamp a digital document

  • Published: January 1991
  • Volume 3, pages 99–111, (1991)
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How to time-stamp a digital document
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  • Stuart Haber1 &
  • W. Scott Stornetta1 
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Abstract

The prospect of a world in which all text, audio, picture, and video documents are in digital form on easily modifiable media raises the issue of how to certify when a document was created or last changed. The problem is to time-stamp the data, not the medium. We propose computationally practical procedures for digital time-stamping of such documents so that it is infeasible for a user either to back-date or to forward-date his document, even with the collusion of a time-stamping service. Our procedures maintain complete privacy of the documents themselves, and require no record-keeping by the time-stamping service.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bellcore, 445 South Street, 07960-1910, Morristown, NJ, USA

    Stuart Haber & W. Scott Stornetta

Authors
  1. Stuart Haber
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  2. W. Scott Stornetta
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Haber, S., Stornetta, W.S. How to time-stamp a digital document. J. Cryptology 3, 99–111 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00196791

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  • Received: 19 August 1990

  • Revised: 26 October 1990

  • Issue date: January 1991

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00196791

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Key words

  • Time-stamp
  • Hash
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