Zeitgitter Server at zeitgitter.alpeinsoft.ch
Zeitgitter or Independent GIT Timestamping is the
foundation of a network of timestamping services.
Why timestamping?
Timestamping serves as evidence that you knew about a specific piece of
information at a given time, and maybe even before. It can therefore be seen as
a weak form of notarization for the particular single document or document
collection that was timestamped.
Timestamping does not provide evidence that you also authored the
information or you were authorized to know it.
Why timestamping with GIT and Zeitgitter?
Timestamping GIT repositories has the following advantages:
- No additional software is required to verify the timestamps.
- No document needs to be modified to timestamp it.
- No hashes of documents are published, only IDs of your commits.
- Timestamps are cumulative, i.e., any commits which are ancestors of a
timestamp are implicitely timestamped as well.
The design considerations of Zeitgitter also come with the following features:
- Timestamps are issued in real time: You get a timestamp in a matter of
seconds, at most.
- The timestamping process results in a valid timestamped signature,
which you can immediately store in your GIT repository.
(All the
remaining mumbo-jumbo is just to ensure that timestampers are not
mis-issuing any backdated timestamps and that this can also be
publicly audited at any time.)
- The audit log for the timestamps is a GIT repository as well, i.e., the
input and the output formats are compatible. This follows the Unix
component and stdio principle and allows such logs to
be timestamped by other Zeitgitter servers as well.
- As a result, a network of timestampers can be built,
cross-timestamping each other.
- Any trustworthy cross-timestamp limits the ability of the receiving
timestamper to maliciously issue wrong timestamps. Especially, it is
not possible to issue a timestamp after a trustworthy
cross-timestamp claiming to have been issued before this
cross-timestamp.
- As a result, already a single trustworthy timestamper in the
entire network can greatly limit the freedom of any other
timestamper to issue backdated timestamps. This is in stark
contrast to other distributed systems, where slightly more
than one third or one half of malicious nodes can control
the entire network.
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Learn more about timestamping, Zeitgitter, the Zeitgitter network, how to use it,
and how to join it. |