SIGNIFLOW

• XAdES (or XAdES-BES for "Basic Electronic Signature"): This provides basic authentication and integrity protection and satisfies the legal requirements for advanced electronic signatures as defined in the Directive 1999/93/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 December 1999 on a Community framework for electronic signatures [ EU-DIR-ESIG]. This profile does not provide non-repudiation of signature existence or long-term validation. • XAdES-T (Timestamp): This profile adds a timestamp (i.e. the time the digital signature was applied) that provides protection against repudiation of a digital certificate. If the applicable digital certificate was not repudiated before the time of the digital signature, repudiation of the signature is not possible. • XAdES-C (Complete): Useful for situations in which information is archived by an external source such as a trusted service provider, this profile includes references to the set of data that supports the validation of the electronic signature (i.e. references to the certification path and its associated revocation status information). XAdES-C allows offline verification, but does not store the actual data. • XAdES-X (Extended): This profile is essentially an XML Advanced Electronic Signature with extended validation data. It includes a timestamp on the references to the validation data, or on the signature element and the validation data. The XAdES timestamp takes into account the risk that any keys used in the certificate chain, or in the revocation status information, may be compromised. • XAdES-X-L (Extended long-term): XML Advanced Electronic Signatures with extended validation data that is incorporated for the long term. This profile, which includes the crucial feature of long-term validation, adds actual certificates and revocation lists to the signed document to allow verification in future, even if the original source is not available. • XAdES-A (Archival): This profile includes additional timestamps for archiving signatures so that they are protected in the event cryptographic data becomes weak. It allows for periodical timestamping, for example each year, of the archived document in order to prevent any compromise that may be caused by the weakening of a signature over a period of time.