LTANS                                                   A. Jerman Blazic
Internet-Draft                                                    SETCCE
Intended status: Informational                              P. Sylvester
Expires: April 26, 2007                                          EdelWeb
                                                              C. Wallace
                                                Orion Security Solutions
                                                        October 23, 2006


                   Long-term Archive Protocol (LTAP)
                        draft-ietf-ltans-ltap-03

Status of this Memo

   By submitting this Internet-Draft, each author represents that any
   applicable patent or other IPR claims of which he or she is aware
   have been or will be disclosed, and any of which he or she becomes
   aware will be disclosed, in accordance with Section 6 of BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups.  Note that
   other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-
   Drafts.

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at
   http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt.

   The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at
   http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html.

   This Internet-Draft will expire on April 26, 2007.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2006).

Abstract

   This document describes a service operated as a trusted third party
   to securely archive electronic document called a long-term archive
   service (LTA).  We describe an architecture framework and a protocol
   allowing clients to interact with such a service.  Bindings to
   concrete transport and security protocol layers are given.



Jerman Blazic, et al.    Expires April 26, 2007                 [Page 1]


Internet-Draft                    LTAP                      October 2006


Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
     1.1.  Requirements notation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
   2.  Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
   3.  Framework  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
     3.1.  Functional Overview  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
     3.2.  Service functions of an LTA  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
     3.3.  Transactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
     3.4.  Life cycles of objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
     3.5.  Roles, Service Types, Policies and Configurations  . . . . 12
     3.6.  Entities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
     3.7.  Data Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
   4.  Data Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
     4.1.  Artifacts  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
     4.2.  Message Imprint  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
     4.3.  MetaData . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
     4.4.  Nonce  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
     4.5.  RawData  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
     4.6.  DataOrTransaction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
     4.7.  Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
     4.8.  SerialNumber . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
     4.9.  RequestTime  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
     4.10. Version  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
     4.11. EntityIdentifier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
     4.12. ServiceType  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
     4.13. StatusInformation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
     4.14. GeneralErrorNotice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
     4.15. RequestInformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
   5.  Top level protocol elements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
     5.1.  Request  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
     5.2.  ErrorNotice  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
     5.3.  OperationResponse  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
     5.4.  Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
   6.  Service Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
     6.1.  ARCHIVE operation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
     6.2.  STATUS operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
     6.3.  EXPORT operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
     6.4.  VERIFY operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
     6.5.  DELETE operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
   7.  Presentation and Bindings  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
   8.  Security and Transport . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
   9.  Credits  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
   10. Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
   11. IPR Patent Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
   12. IANA consideration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
   13. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
     13.1. Normative references . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36



Jerman Blazic, et al.    Expires April 26, 2007                 [Page 2]


Internet-Draft                    LTAP                      October 2006


     13.2. Informative references . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
   Appendix A.  ASN.1 module  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
   Appendix B.  XML schema  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
   Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
   Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . . . . 39














































Jerman Blazic, et al.    Expires April 26, 2007                 [Page 3]


Internet-Draft                    LTAP                      October 2006


1.  Introduction

   Conservation of documents is important, one can even say that
   appropriate conservation rules are a prerequisite for data to be come
   a document.  Conservation has several aspects, e.g., duration or
   accessibility, which vary based on the nature of the document.  For
   example, a document may be conserved for a certain period and may be
   destroyed after that, or its lifetime may be extended when the
   documents becomes part of a conflict.  Also, documents may become
   part of historical archives.  A document may be accessible on a
   public or restricted basis to a set of potentially interested or
   authorized entities.

   The protocol described in this document enables the use of a
   specialized service for conservation of electronic documents.  The
   service creates and delivers enough information to demonstrate the
   existence, integrity and authenticity of electronic data over any
   period of time.  In other words, the service assumes the
   responsibility to retrieve and, optionally, store data for
   conservation, create and store evidence to guarantee data integrity
   and completeness, and to maintain accessibility of data and evidence
   created.

   This document describes a protocol for interacting with a long-term
   archive service (LTA).  The document contains only description of a
   general request and response structure, and a detailed protocol
   description concerning access to an LTA.  Other specifications and
   descriptions, e.g. a framework protocol containing mappings to
   transport and security services, are addressed elsewhere.  The
   protocol is intended to be used in client-server architecture, where
   client is simply an end user (a physical user or another service) and
   the server as an LTA.

   The process of replacing paper based workflow and document handling
   is known as 'dematerialization', ignoring to a certain degree the
   requirements for long term stability of documents.  Document
   conservation is generally performed by specialized services.  For
   electronic formats it is proposed to use similar approaches, while
   maintaining the distance of technical characteristics (paper versus
   electronic).  Conservation might be taken out from other workflow
   activities, while the same procedures (evidence creation) might be
   used for any milestone in electronic document lifecycle (e.g. version
   marking).

   Since conservation of documents created by one entity is only
   necessary if there is a potential entity to which the document may be
   presented at some time, the conservation service (LTA) acts as a
   trusted third party for those two entities.  The main role of an LTA



Jerman Blazic, et al.    Expires April 26, 2007                 [Page 4]


Internet-Draft                    LTAP                      October 2006


   is to generate and provide enough information for archived data
   existence in time, integrity and authenticity demonstration over long
   periods of time.  Provision of data storage services is optional and
   may be assured by supportive infrastructure (e.g. database or
   document storage/management system).

   Conservation is more that just storing a document.  Not only, but in
   particular when the life time is very long, appropriate measures to
   ensure the integrity of the document must be used.  This aspect is
   handled by this specification.  Sometimes, complete transfer of the
   document information to a new physical support has to be done like
   transformations from marble to paper or paper to microfilm.  The need
   for such transformation make the definition of what constitutes the
   actual document somewhat difficult, in particular it should be done
   independantly of the support, and even independantly of a current
   format of the document information.  Transformation of documents are
   largely the scope of this specification besides the obvious
   possibility of storing all formats of a document and assertions about
   the transformations.

   Note: This is still a very incomplete text.  The abstract service and
   protocol is almost finished.

   Note: This document does not contain a concrete binding to lower
   layers.  This may be added later or defined in a separate document.
   Means to exchange protocol messages are not explicitly defined.
   Transport should be possible over http/soap and other protocols.
   Defined data structures are presented in XSD and ASN1 forms.

1.1.  Requirements notation

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
   document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].


2.  Background

   A conservation service or long term archive (LTA) consists of several
   functional blocks.  Some of these blocks are not considered by LTANS
   as they present the basic infrastructure, such as the communication
   network, storage device, data management, etc.  Instead, an LTA
   implements the archive interaction protocol as defined by this
   specification (LTAP) and manages archive objects (logically
   interpreted as packages of archive data and conservation attributes)
   and evidence records [I-D.ietf-ltans-ers].  An LTA is a part of a
   general archive service that provides evidence used to demonstrate
   the existence of an archived data object at a given time and the



Jerman Blazic, et al.    Expires April 26, 2007                 [Page 5]


Internet-Draft                    LTAP                      October 2006


   integrity of the archived data object since that time.  The LTA is
   the primary part tasked with creating and delivering conservation
   attributes for archived data.

   [I-D.ietf-ltans-reqs] defines the services that must be provided by
   an LTA.  A pricipal function of the LTA is to generate or obtain
   evidence information for (archive) data submited.  It may accept data
   and generate (or acquire from another service) evidence inforamtion
   or it may simply act as an evidence and demonstration information
   servce without data storage capabilities (it only handles evidence
   and demonstration information).  Evidence generated and maintained by
   an LTA addresses the problems of long-term integrity and temporal
   existence.

   Archive objects are the central logical structures defined by the LTA
   and maintained on a long-term basis.  They are atomic elements of an
   LTA service consisting of three logical elements.  The logical
   structure of an archive object consists of:

   o  Archive data (including meta-data or other related data) entering
      the LTA using the interaction protocol,

   o  Archive process related meta or binding information and

   o  Evidence information

   The archive data may contain any data type, e.g., raw data, signed
   data, encrypted data or time stamped data as defined by
   [I-D.ietf-ltans-reqs].  Archive data may be associated with
   additional data or attributes, e.g. meta information or digital
   signatures.

   Data generated or collected by the LTA are archive process related
   meta or binding information including demonstration information and
   evidence information.  Archive meta data is needed to provide enough
   information for e.g. special (legal) purposes or validity
   demonstration purposes (e.g. complementary information to digital
   signatures).  The LTA collects meta or binding information directly
   from a user or some other entity (e.g.  Certificate Authority).  Such
   information may contain the data owner name, organization, location,
   etc.  Meta or binding information may be submitted by the LTAP
   protocol.

   Demonstration information is collected to demonstrate facts on the
   archive data.  Such information may be digital signature reference
   information.  The LTA may use external resources to collect such
   information usually without user intervention.  Evidence data is
   generated by the LTA or collected from an external resource, e.g. a



Jerman Blazic, et al.    Expires April 26, 2007                 [Page 6]


Internet-Draft                    LTAP                      October 2006


   time stamping authority.  Evidence information is provided for all
   data: archive data submitted by a client and archive process related
   data (including binding and demonstration information) collected by
   the LTA from the client or alternative resource.

   The LTA performs perpetual maintenance of generated archive objects
   for the main purpose of demonstrating archive data existence in time
   and providing integrity information for the complete archiving time.
   Archive objects are periodically processed to provide long term
   stability (e.g. by proof-reading, copying to new material, or
   performing time stamp renewal).

   The LTAP protocol interprets the logical data structure to hold all
   needed information (including references) to build an archive object
   including archive data itself (or reference to archive data).  The
   logical structure of the LTAP messages includes archive data,
   archiving process related information and references together with
   request and processing information.  Using LTAP, the LTA should have
   enough information to build and perform operations on an archive
   object(s).


3.  Framework

   This chapter describes a general framework for secure exchange of
   request and response messages between an archive client and archive
   server, e.g. an LTA.  It provides a high level outline and identifies
   common and external aspects from the concrete protocol data units.

3.1.  Functional Overview

   An LTA, as defined by [I-D.ietf-ltans-reqs], is a service that is
   responsible for preserving evidence data and/or data for long periods
   of time.

   The service is accessible using the protocol defined in this
   document.  The protocol consists of two layers, the higher layer
   defines the available service functions and their mapping to
   encodings, the lower layer defines the rules for the exchange of
   protocol messages common for all all functions.

   It is assumed that an LTA ensures the long term availability of
   stored data and created evidence information, as necessary, and uses
   appropriate means to manage data and access rights.  The details of
   these important features of an LTA are outside the scope of this
   specification.

   The common high-level architecture consists of a protocol used to



Jerman Blazic, et al.    Expires April 26, 2007                 [Page 7]


Internet-Draft                    LTAP                      October 2006


   exchange requests and responses securely, potentially over different
   types of transport connections, to ensure the long term validity of
   responses.

   Clients and servers use one of several object types to build requests
   and responses.  Data objects include raw (archive) data, request
   information, meta information, identification information and
   attestations.

   Requests and responses are exchanged in a secure way responding to
   different security requirements, which may concern the security of
   the transport as well as the long term validity of the data being
   exchanged.

   The LTA is not a method for implementing something like a secure file
   system.  In general, archived data are rarely accessed, restored or
   transferred.  Thus, the archive operation is the most important one
   and performance is an important concern.  In this case that client
   applications need frequenet access to the data, they generally keep a
   copy of the data including evidence information, whose integrity can
   be compared from time to time or when requested.

3.2.  Service functions of an LTA

   The primary aim of this protocol is to enable a formal interaction
   between a client and an LTA.  The result of the interaction is a
   verifiable attestation of procedures performed by an LTA (e.g.
   archive data plus evidence record).  The format for data structures
   used to demonstrate integrity, i.e. to demonstrate that data has not
   undergone any transformations while in the care of the archive, is
   partially defined in other documents, namely in [I-D.ietf-ltans-ers].
   This specification does not place any requirements on the structure
   of archived data objects.  However, it operates on elements that are
   derived from archive data objects (e.g. message imprints).

   The LTA interface enables clients to perform at least the following
   operations in cooperation with an LTA:

   ARCHIVE:  Submit data to an LTA and request creation of evidence
      information for data

   STATUS:  Inform about the status of data.

   VERIFY:  Determine the integrity and validity of LTA archived data.







Jerman Blazic, et al.    Expires April 26, 2007                 [Page 8]


Internet-Draft                    LTAP                      October 2006


   EXPORT:  Retrieve data (including archive data, meta information and
      evidence information) from an LTA

   DELETE:  Remove data and/or evidence information from an LTA.

   These operation form the minimal set that MUST be implemented by an
   LTA service.  Furthermore, there is a minimal profile for the
   parameter structures for transactions with a single server that does
   act as a final repository.  Parameters and functions MAY be extended
   in order to allow services to propose more complex operations like
   data splitting or relaying.

   An LTA may propose additional service either by extending the
   operations by the means of additional parameters or by defining new
   operations.

   Often, an extension of the initial lifetime of an object must be
   possible.  To extend the lifetime of an object, an EXPORT operation
   followed by an ARCHIVE operation has be used to transfer or copy the
   object to an LTA service having the required lifetime policy/
   configuration.  At last, the initial object may be deleted or not.
   The combination of such a sequence of operation into single one is an
   example of an extended service provided to clients.

3.3.  Transactions

   The model for the exchange of LTAP requests and responses is borrowed
   from other environments like EDI, X.400 or ebXML.  It's main
   caracteristic is that exchanges for LTAP are conceptually
   asynchronous.  As a consequence, it is necessary to provide a
   mechanism to allow a client to determime that the LTA has received
   and processed a request.  An LTAP exchange consists of sending a
   request and retrieving at least one of two different types of
   responses.  A client initiates an archive service by submiting a
   request.  This LTAP request consists of data to be archived and
   information related to the archive process.  The process information
   may include client authorization, archive policy, service parameters,
   etc.  The first type of response is a technical acknowledgement from
   the LTA that the request has been received and the process
   information has been accepted (or rejected).  The second type of
   response is a statement from an LTA containing an indication of the
   outcome of the requested operation.  This result (called an
   attestation) is, in general, a document with long term validity
   allowing the client to reference the operation, and, in particular,
   to reference the data that has been preserved by the LTA.

   The asynchronous nature of the LTAP protocol is required by LTA
   operations, which may require a specific amount of time to perform,



Jerman Blazic, et al.    Expires April 26, 2007                 [Page 9]


Internet-Draft                    LTAP                      October 2006


   e.g. the archive operation needs to safely store the data and to
   produce evidence information.

   The possibility to deliver the result attestation in a asynchronous
   way permits cost effective implementations of the LTA.

   An LTA may deliver immediately a second type response.  This occurs
   for example for a STATUS function or when an EXPORT operation is
   retried.

   A client can repeat an operation, since the request or the response
   might have been lost.

   For an ARCHIVE operation, the client can provide a unique
   identification for the request that to be used by the LTA to ensure
   idempotence of the operation.  When retrying an ARCHIVE operation, a
   client MAY replace the raw data to be archived by a MessageDigest
   representing the data in order to reduce the payload size.

   For the ARCHIVE, DELETE, VERIFY operations, after receipt of the
   technical acknowledgement (first type response), the client can also
   use a STATUS operation for the object in order to indirectly
   determine the outcome of a transaction.  Depending on the lower layer
   bindings, sending a STATUS request or retrying another operation may
   be the only way to determine the outcome of an archive operation.

3.4.  Life cycles of objects

   Using the defined transactions and the operations on object, two
   levels of life cycles are defined.  One is directly derived from the
   operation of a single transaction.  The other is related to the long
   term situation of an object.

3.4.1.  Transaction Level Life Cycle

   When a client initiates an archive operation, client and server have
   some knowledge of the progress of the operation.  The following list
   explains the different states of a transaction seen by both the
   client and the service, and decribes actions and events changing the
   state of the transaction.

   T0:  The client has not initiated an archive operation.  The LTA does
      not know anything about an object.

   T1:  The client has initiated an archive operation.  The LTA may have
      received the object or not; the client cannot assume that the TAS
      has received the request.  Client may retry the operation after a
      timeout.



Jerman Blazic, et al.    Expires April 26, 2007                [Page 10]


Internet-Draft                    LTAP                      October 2006


   T2:  The LTA has received the request and has generated a first type
      response.  The server ensures idempotence of at least the ARCHIVE
      operation, i.e. on multiple occurrences of an identical request,
      the LTA sends the same response and transaction identification.
      The LTA may still loose the state, e.g., in case of a power
      failure.

   T3:  The client has received the initial response.  The client can
      retry the initial operation using the transaction identification
      at the place of the data in order to receive a final answer.  In
      case of negative response, i.e.  LTA in state T0, client can fall
      back to T1.

   T4:  The LTA has send a definitive answer for an operation and has
      assumed the responsability of operation.

   T5:  The client has received a definitive answer and can consider the
      operation as terminated.

   In case of negative reponses to a transaction, the LTA keeps the
   result for a certain time in order to provide a reasonable answer to
   a client that retries an operation.

3.4.2.  Long term life cycle.

   When an LTA has archived an object, it keeps a certain number of
   metadata, which gives information about the current status of the
   object.  Metadata may remain available even after deleting the
   object, among the remaining metadata there is the date of deletion or
   an information where the information can actually be received.

   We can distinguish the following phases in the lifetimes of an
   archived object:

   T0:  The LTA has no knowledge about an object.

   T1:  An LTA has received an archive object and is proceeding the
      request.  The LTA may accept or reject the request, or may loose
      knowledge about it.

   T2:  An LTA has archived an object.  An LTA can accept other
      operations, i.e., EXPORT, DELETE or VERIFY operations.  When
      receiving an EXPORT or VERIFY operation, some metadata may be
      updated, e.g., last time of access, last verification operation
      etc.






Jerman Blazic, et al.    Expires April 26, 2007                [Page 11]


Internet-Draft                    LTAP                      October 2006


   T3:  After a DELETE operation prior to the initially defined lifetime
      of the operation, the LTA MAY keep an information about the actual
      status of the object (e.g. deleted) until the end of the lifetime.
      If available, the LTA MAY returns other remaining metadata
      containing for example a new location of the data.

   T4:  After the lifetime of an object, an object or the reference to
      is being deleted.  At the end of this internal operation, the LTA
      is in state T0.

   With the basic operations it is not possible to extend directly the
   lifetime of an object.  In order to do so, a client has to read the
   object and store it under a different service.

   A change from state T2 can also occur when an LTA determines loss of
   integrity or loss of data.

3.5.  Roles, Service Types, Policies and Configurations

   The protocol assumes a number of different actors playing different
   roles.  The basic roles are a client and a server.  These roles are
   simply defined by the types of protocol data units, i.e., requests
   and responses.  Several other roles may exist, which are currently
   not in the scope of the protocol specification.  An example of an
   additional role is a relay or a proxy using both the basic roles of
   client and server.  In general two entities are distinguished, based
   on different characteristics: an entity that requests its data to be
   archived or to be acted upon, and an entity that accepts data and
   assures responsibility of archived data, or acts on the data.  Other
   entities serving as a lower layer transport services, data storage
   services or security services are out of the scope of protocol
   definition.

   Clients may occur in different roles.  Besides users that archive
   data, there may be relying or controlling entities like a judge who
   must be able to get access to it.  Or, there are entities like
   auditors that may access to some data.  The protocol distinguish such
   roles by the definition of the following service types and service
   policy information.

   The LTA interface implementation MUST enable clients to perform all
   five service operations.

   A client implementation MAY only support a subset of the service
   types in order to have a small footprint.  This is motivated from the
   fact that different operations are generally invoked by different
   entities in totally different environments, e.g., a client may only
   submit data and never verify an evidence record.



Jerman Blazic, et al.    Expires April 26, 2007                [Page 12]


Internet-Draft                    LTAP                      October 2006


   As mentioned above, depending on the lower layer transport bindings,
   a client may be required to have implemented the STATUS operation in
   order to retrieve the outcome of another operation.

   The way a particular operation is performed is only defined at the
   LTA server side implementation and can be influenced by policy
   information parameters.  A client MAY indicate one or more service
   policy identifiers associated to a service type in order to select
   different features to be performed by the LTA.  The goal of policy
   identifiers is to have client configurations simple.

   An LTA service may provide additional features, which may be
   identified by clients, that govern how services are performed.  An
   LTA might offer a series of features based on quality
   characteristics, e.g. number of timestamps used, refresh period, etc.
   The protocol specification builds on the assumption that features are
   clearly identifiable and are included in the protocol elements.
   Features enable clients to request specific handling by the LTA, such
   as requesting a premium service that assures prompt and immediate
   archiving vs. a standard service that handles queues and generates
   evidence data periodically based on data collections, i.e., one
   timestamp per a document bundle.  Also, services may differ according
   to data storage characteristics (e.g. client may request full
   evidence and storage capacity or only evidence creation service),
   redundancy characteristics (single timestamp versus multiple time
   stamping), etc.  Service characteristics are defined by archive or
   operation policies.

   An LTA may use external services, like validation and evidence
   creation services.  Another service is provision of physical
   infrastructure or data storage and management systems.  Such entities
   can also be referenced by service policy identifiers.

   In general, for each client, in particular those that are archiving,
   a default or single possible configuration is defined at the server
   in order to group features and policies into defined sets.  A server
   may operate different configurations and from the protocol
   standpoint, general configuration is selected by the policy
   identificator.

   As a last mechanism to provide parameters to the archive server, LTA
   clients MAY use specific configuration parameters in their requests.
   The definition of such parameters is not in the scope of this
   protocol.  Configuration parameters allow clients to transfer
   arbitary key/value pairs from the client to the server.

   In principle, a single sequence of policy information is sufficient
   to indicate both the service type and the configuration parameters.



Jerman Blazic, et al.    Expires April 26, 2007                [Page 13]


Internet-Draft                    LTAP                      October 2006


   A multi-dimensional approach with configuration and service types
   rounds up the requirements for LTA and scenarios of archiving
   processes.

   This specification defines no particular policy or configuration.

3.6.  Entities

   Entities that participate in protocol exchanges are represented by
   identifiers and may possess attributes.  It is outside the scope of
   this definition to define an organisation of identifiers and
   attributes, in particular the way how entity identifiers are related
   to identifiers used for authentication, or what attributes are
   associated to data.

   As the current LTAP specification assumes end-to-end communication
   only, there is no distinction between technical roles like 'client,
   'server', 'relay', 'proxy' or 'authorized agent'.  For LTAP, only
   client and server roles are defined.

   The explicit usage of identifiers and attributes enables decisions to
   be traceable, i.e., the participating entities can indicate to a
   certain degree why they want a service or why it has been provided.

   Furthermore, entity identifiers and attributes MAY be provided by the
   transport or security layer information.  These information can be
   added to protocol elements as trace attributes.

3.6.1.  Entity Identifiers

   Entity identifiers are used in the protocol to indicate the
   participating entities.  A client can indicate one or more
   identifiers indicating who is making the request or participating in
   its creation and one or more identifiers indicating who should
   perform the service.  A server can indidate who has provided the
   service and who is the indented client.

   It MUST be ensured in some way that in an actual context of a client/
   server network names are scalable and global both in terms of actual
   community space and time to live of the treated data objects.

   Identifiers are labeled in some way, i.e. string representations are
   typed and can be derived from various external layers.  Identifiers
   SHOULD use an appropriate structure such as ASN.1 definition of
   GeneralName.






Jerman Blazic, et al.    Expires April 26, 2007                [Page 14]


Internet-Draft                    LTAP                      October 2006


3.6.2.  Attributes

   Entities may possess additional attributes like roles, scopes or
   capabilities.  Entities MAY indicate attribute values in protocol
   exchanges so that they can be used for authentication purposes or
   billing.

   Attributes may be related to attributes of data, for example, an
   entity may acts as a judge or arbitrator for a particular
   jurisdiction.  The attribute jurisdiction is associated to the entity
   and to data treated by the service, and thus, can be used for
   authorisation control.

3.7.  Data Model

   The data fields of a LTAP request are as follows:

   o  request information or status information

   o  raw data to archive, or references to data or to transactions.

   o  metadata providing additional information about the data to
      archive

   o  authorisation and authentication information of the entities
      paticipating in the procedure

   o  other information, required for supporting functions like billing

3.7.1.  Data objects

   The data to be archived are arbitrary binary data and, minimally, an
   associated type that MUST be either available as part of a server
   configuration policy or explicitly indicated by the client.

   Data can be referenced by identifiers.  Data identifiers are used to
   uniquely identify data objects.  Data identifiers SHOULD have an
   additional local structure (e.g., contain a checksum), in order to
   avoid or detect client copying errors.  An additional measure to
   enhance the redundancy of identifiers is the usage of time values
   which can be used in combination with data identifiers.

   Servers MUST create a server-wide unique identifier for each data
   object managed by the LTA.  The identifier MUST be global during the
   intended lifetime of an object.

   Clients may provide their own data identifiers in requests.  Whether
   the client provided identifiers are unique is outside the scope of



Jerman Blazic, et al.    Expires April 26, 2007                [Page 15]


Internet-Draft                    LTAP                      October 2006


   the protocol.  LTAs treat these identifiers as opaque information.

   In order to identify data for the short lifespan of a transaction,
   artifacts can be used to reference data or transactions.

3.7.2.  Collection objects

   Data grouping can occur for various reasons, i.e. logical,
   contextual, semantic, operational, etc.  It is out of the scope of
   the LTA to perform grouping for other reasons than operational, e.g.
   reducing costs or improving performance or scalability.  Grouping is
   performed on the level of evidence creation by building hash trees as
   defined in [I-D.ietf-ltans-ers].  Grouping characteristics are
   defined by service policies, e.g. per user or on a daily or volume
   basis.  The global parameters for selecting appropriate collection
   strategies are entity and policy identfiers.

   Collections of data can be defined explicitly or implicitly.  A
   document is added to a collection using policy and entity identifiers
   to request a specific collection strategy (e.g. a collection of data
   that is processed on a daily basis for a specific user).  A
   collection identifier may be presented as an extension to an object
   identifier and is intially local to one object.  Adding another
   object to a collection requires the identification of the initial
   object and the identification of one object in the collection.

3.7.3.  MetaData

   Meta information is associated with archive data and can be included
   implicitly, i.e. be a part of a document, or explicitly, i.e. as a
   document attachment.  An LTA does not interprete meta data that may
   express logical relations among documents in the archive that is
   submitted selectively using several requests.  For LTAs, the client
   is only in control of selecting and enclosing meta information, which
   is logically, contextually or for any other reason related to a
   document.

   Meta information may occur in various forms and may be an integral
   part of archive data, e.g. security attributes in form of digital
   signatures.  To process such information, the LTA MUST retrieve
   enough information on the type and purpose of information enclosed,
   which may simply be defined with the use of an apropriate archive
   service policy, e.g. archive service for digitally signed documents.

   An LTA may perform specific actions related to meta information
   processing (and preservation, such as complementary data collection
   in form of digital certificates).  This can also be done by an
   external service, e.g.  [RFC3029] or SVCP.



Jerman Blazic, et al.    Expires April 26, 2007                [Page 16]


Internet-Draft                    LTAP                      October 2006


   In some scenarios, a specific set of meta information must be
   preserved together with archive data, e.g. information identifying
   the document owner/author, location or time.  The LTAP protocol does
   not define constraints on information type and structure.  The LTAP
   request structure is defined to accept any type of data.

3.7.4.  Binding Information

   Clients and servers MAY include additional information in their
   requests and responses concerning the lower layer binding to a
   transport like SOAP, HTTP or S/MIME, i.e. end-point addresses etc.
   This category may also include things like billing/accounting
   information, i.e. whatever a business transaction needs but which is
   not part of metadata, i.e. outside the scope of the archived data.

   Note: This section needs further discussion.

3.7.5.  Evidence Data

   Evidence information demonstrates the integrity and existence of
   archived data.  The LTA accepts data for the single purpose of
   generating or obtaining evidence information for data submitted by a
   client.  The evidence information structure is defined in
   [I-D.ietf-ltans-ers].

   In case the LTA accepts data only for the purpose of generating
   evidence information (without storage capabilites to avoid, e.g.
   confidentiality issues), the archivation process is limited in time.
   When an LTA performs a renewal of evidence, archived data may be
   required to be available, e.g. when renewing a hash tree.  In such
   scenarios, the LTA requires availability of archived data for hash
   re-computation.  The LTAP protocol does not support function for data
   re-submission.


4.  Data Types

   A number of data types are common to both requests and responses.  We
   give definitions of data as well in XML schema notation as well as in
   ASN.1.  It is intended that an encoding using XML encoding rules of
   the ASN.1 defined data give the same encoding as the XML Schema
   defined type.  We note that the ASN.1 definitions are not
   automatically derived from the XSD definitions (but almost).

   The following schema is defined by this text:






Jerman Blazic, et al.    Expires April 26, 2007                [Page 17]


Internet-Draft                    LTAP                      October 2006


   XML Schema Identification

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
   <xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
              elementFormDefault="qualified"
              attributeFormDefault="unqualified">

   This text defines the following ASN.1 module.

   ASN.1 Module start

   LTAP {iso(1) identified-organization(3) dod(6)
         internet(1) security(5) mechanisms(5)
         ltans(11) id-mod(1) id-mod-ers(1) }
   DEFINITIONS IMPLICIT TAGS ::=
   BEGIN


   The asn.1 module exports all its identifiers and imports several
   identifiers according the following definition:

   ASN.1 Module Imports

   -- EXPORTS ALL --
   IMPORTS AlgorithmIdentifier FROM AuthenticationFramework
                                    {joint-iso-itu-t(2) ds(5) module(1)}

4.1.  Artifacts

   Artificats are identifiers used to reference a transaction, or a
   result of a transaction.  They can be returned as a protocol answer
   instead of a response, and allow to retrieve a response or progress
   of a transaction later by the initial client or another authorised
   entity.

   XML Schema element

   <simpleType name="Artifact">
     <restriction base="string">
     </restriction>
   </simpleType>

   ASN.1 definition

   Artifact ::= UTF8STRING






Jerman Blazic, et al.    Expires April 26, 2007                [Page 18]


Internet-Draft                    LTAP                      October 2006


4.2.  Message Imprint

   A Message Imprint is a short representation of data which can be used
   in evidences to link to some data.  This is just another way of
   saying that they are the result of a one way hash function applied to
   some data.

   We do not assume that a message imprint will always identify some
   data in a unique way (which is not the case by definition of a hash
   function), neither do we assume that collisions may not exist now or
   in the future.  We only assume that within a bounded collection of
   data objects (in time and number), which are stored phyically safe,
   message imprints uniquely designate other data.

   Nevertheless, it is assumed that for the lifetime of protocol
   exchanges, hash functions used to create message imprints are
   crytographically safe.

   The structure of a message imprint is a sequence of an globally
   defined identification of a hash function and an representation of an
   octet string encoding a value of the hash function.

   Message Digests have two components, an identifier of the hash
   algorithm, and a value represention the result of the hash algorithm
   applied to the data.

   XML Schema element

   <complexType name="MessageImprint">
     <sequence>
       <element name="DigestAlgorithm" type="anyURI" />
       <element name="DigestValue" type="base64Binary" />
     </sequence>
   </complexType>

   ASN.1 Definition

   MessageImprint ::= SEQUENCE {
     digestAlgorithms AlgorithmIdentifier,
     digestValue OCTET STRING
   }

4.3.  MetaData

   Metadata are a list of open types which can be regarded as key/value
   pairs giving addtional information about entities or data and are
   related to preservation process.




Jerman Blazic, et al.    Expires April 26, 2007                [Page 19]


Internet-Draft                    LTAP                      October 2006


   XML Schema element

   <complexType name="MetaData">
     <sequence maxOccurs="unbounded">
       <element namespace="##any" processContents="lax" />
     <sequence>
   </complexType>

   ASN.1 Definition

   Metadata ::= SEQUENCE OF SEQUENCE {
     type OBJECT IDENTIFIER,
     value UTF8STRING
   }

4.4.  Nonce

   A Nonce is an octetstring used to avoid replays of responses for the
   STATUS operation.  If present in a request, a server MUST respond
   with a response containing the Nonce value..

   XML Schema element

   <simpleType name="Nonce">
     <restriction base="hexBinary">
     </restriction>
   </simpleType>

   ASN.1 Definition

   Nonce ::= OCTET STRING ;

4.5.  RawData

   This type carries binary data to be verified, archived or returned.
   A client MAY select a metadata type to indicate the type of the data.

   TBD: For preservation purposes, an LTA must have information on
   archive data type (e.g. signed or unsigned).  If type is not
   included, it is assumed that data retrived must be processed as
   binary string (e.g signatures are not verifed and artifacts
   collected).

   XML Schema element

   <simpleType name="RawData">
    <restriction base="base64" />
   </simpleType>



Jerman Blazic, et al.    Expires April 26, 2007                [Page 20]


Internet-Draft                    LTAP                      October 2006


   ASN.1 Definition

   RawData ::= OCTET STRING ;

4.6.  DataOrTransaction

   This choice type is used to identify data by:

   o  themselves

   o  an artifact identifying a transaction

   o  a data identifier

   XML Schema element

   <complexType name="DataOrTransaction">
    <choice>
     <element ref="RawData" / >
     <element ref="Artifact" />
     <element name="DataReference" type="anyURI" />
    </choice>
   </complexType>

   ASN.1 Definition

   DataOrTransaction::= CHOICE {
       raw RawData ,
       artifact Artifact ,
       datareference UTF8STRING
   }

4.7.  Data

   This type is used to describe data together with metadata.

   XML Schema element

   <complexType name="Data">
    <sequence>
     <element ref="DataOrTransaction" / >
     <element ref="MetaData" />
     <element ref="MessageDigest />
    </sequence>
   </complexType>






Jerman Blazic, et al.    Expires April 26, 2007                [Page 21]


Internet-Draft                    LTAP                      October 2006


   ASN.1 Definition

   Data ::= SEQUENCE {
       dataorid DataOrTransaction ,
       metaData  metaData ,
       messageDigest MessageDigest
   }

4.8.  SerialNumber

   Serial numbers are used to identify requests and responses.  They are
   represented as integers.  Servers MAY add an additional verifyable
   structure to identifiers, e.g. checksum digits, in order to avoid
   copying errors in long term applications with potential media break.

   XML Schema element

   <simpleType name="SerialNumber">
    <restriction base="integer" />
   </simpleType>

   ASN.1 Definition

   SerialNumber ::= Integer ;

4.9.  RequestTime

   Clients and servers can add an indication of (its idea of) the time
   when a request or response was created.  A time value is represented
   as string representation of the content of the ASN.1 type
   GENERALIZEDTIME permitted to be encoded in ASN.1 distinguished
   encodeing rules (DER).

   XML Schema element

   <simpleType name="RequestTime">
    <restriction base="xs:dateTime">
     <pattern
     value="[\-]{0,1}\d{4}\-\d{2}\-\d{2}T\d{2}:\d{2}:\d{2}.\d{3}Z"/>
    <restriction>
   </simpleType>

   ASN.1 Definition

   Time ::= GENERALIZEDTIME ;






Jerman Blazic, et al.    Expires April 26, 2007                [Page 22]


Internet-Draft                    LTAP                      October 2006


4.10.  Version

   Version is used in requests and responses to indicate the protocol
   version used.  This specification is provided for two values:

   o  v0 - This version should be used by implementation that want to
      experiment with draft version of this specification.

   o  v1 - this version is used to indicate that the request and
      response corresponds to this specification.

   TBD: The purpose of version identifier.

   XML Schema element

   <simpleType name="Version">
    <restriction base="NMTOKEN">
     <enumeration value="v0"/>
      <enumeration value="v1"/>
    </restriction>
   </simpleType>

   ASN.1 Definition

   Version ::= ENUMERATED {v0(0), v1(1), ... } ;

4.11.  EntityIdentifier

   Entity identifiers are used in the protocol to indicate the
   participating entities.  A client can indicate one or more
   identifiers indicating who is making the request or participating in
   its creation and one or more identifiers indicating who should
   perform the service.  A server can indidate who has provided the
   service and who is the indented client.

   It MUST be ensured in some way that in an actual context of a client/
   server network names are scalable and global both in terms of actual
   community space and time to live of the treated data objects.

   Since identifiers can be derived from various external layers an
   appropriate structure in ASN.1 or XML structure is used.

   XML Schema element

   <simpleType name="EntityIdentifier">
    <restriction base="string">
    </restriction>
   </simpleType>



Jerman Blazic, et al.    Expires April 26, 2007                [Page 23]


Internet-Draft                    LTAP                      October 2006


   ASN.1 Definition

   Entityidentifier ::= GeneralName ;

4.12.  ServiceType

   This types is an enumeration of the different operations accessible
   by the protocol.  This element provides an explicit general protocol
   element to indicate the intended class of operation which may not
   explicitely be available otherwise with policy information.

   TBA: ASN.1 and XML structure need redefintion.

   XML Schema element

   <simpleType name="ServiceType">
    <restriction base="NMTOKEN">
     <enumeration value="archive" />
     <enumeration value="status" />
     <enumeration value="verify" />
     <enumeration value="export" />
     <enumeration value="delete" />
    </restriction>
   </simpleType>

   ASN.1 Definition

   ServiceType ::= ENUMERATED
               {archive , status, verify , export, delete };

4.13.  StatusInformation

   The LTA indicate the global status of a transaction using this
   enumeration type.  The semantics of the values is as follows:

      The response is an initial first type reponse.  The request has
      been technically accepted by the LTA.

      The response is an second type final response from the LTA.

      The response is an second type final response from the LTA.  The
      operation performed by the LTA but only with some modifications.

      The operation has not been accepted.

   In case of modifications or error, the LTA MUST also return details
   using the following GeneralErrorNotice




Jerman Blazic, et al.    Expires April 26, 2007                [Page 24]


Internet-Draft                    LTAP                      October 2006


   XML Schema element

   <xs:simpleType name="StatusInformation">
    <xs:restriction base="xs:string">
     <xs:enumeration value="waiting" />
     <xs:enumeration value="granted" />
     <xs:enumeration value="grantedWithMods" />
     <xs:enumeration value="rejection" />
    </xs:restriction>
   </xs:simpleType>

   ASN.1 Definition

   ServiceType ::= ENUMERATED
               {waiting , granted, grantedWithMods, rejection };

4.14.  GeneralErrorNotice

   This item is used to indicate details of the status of a transaction.

   XML Schema element

   <xs:element name="GeneralErrorNotice" minOccurs="0">
    <xs:complexType>
     <xs:sequence>
      <xs:element name="GeneralErrorIdentification" type="xs:int" />
      <xs:element name="GeneralErrorInformation">
       <xs:simpleType>
        <xs:restriction base="xs:string">
         <xs:maxLength value="8192"/>
        </xs:restriction>
       </xs:simpleType>
      </xs:element>
     </xs:sequence>
    </xs:complexType>
   </xs:element>

   ASN.1 Definition

   -- TBD


4.15.  RequestInformation

   This data structure comprises information about the request others
   that the raw data and metadata.

   TBA: ASN.1 and XML Structure to be redefined.



Jerman Blazic, et al.    Expires April 26, 2007                [Page 25]


Internet-Draft                    LTAP                      October 2006


   XML Schema element

   <complexType name="RequestInformation">
     <sequence>
       <element name="Version" type="xs:int" fixed="1" />
       <element name="Nonce" minOccurs="0" />
       <element name="SerialNumber" type="xs:long" minOccurs="0" />
       <element name="RequestTime"/>
       <element name="RequestEntityIdentifier" />
       <element name="ServerEntityIdentifier" />
       <element name="ServiceType" minOccurs="1" maxOccurs="1"/>
       <element name="ServicePolicyInformation"
           minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="1">
       <element name="ServiceConfiguration" minOccurs="0" />
     </sequence>
   </complexType>

   ASN.1 Definition

   RequestInformation ::= SEQUENCE {
       version Version DEFAULT v1 ,
       nonce Nonce OPTIONAL,
       serial SerialNumber OPTIONAL,
       service ServiceType,
       time RequestTime OPTIONAL,
       requester SEQUENCE OF RequestEntityIdentifier OPTIONAL,
       server SEQUENCE OF RequestEntityIdentifier OPTIONAL,
       policies PolicyIdentifier
   }


5.  Top level protocol elements

   On the top level, there are three protocol element, one is used in
   requests, and the two other are either describing the successful
   outcome of an operation or an error notice.

5.1.  Request

   This data structure describes a request made by a client.  It
   contains a RequestInformation data structure, as well as data or data
   references.  At least one of the Data and MessageDigest elements must
   be provided.








Jerman Blazic, et al.    Expires April 26, 2007                [Page 26]


Internet-Draft                    LTAP                      October 2006


   XML Schema element

   <complexType name="Request">
    <sequence>
     <element name="RequestInformation" minOccurs="1" />
     <element name="Data" />

    </sequence>
   </complexType>

   ASN.1 Definition

   Request::= SEQUENCE {
       requestInformation RequestInformation,
       theData SEQUENCE OF Data OPTIONAL
   }

5.2.  ErrorNotice

   A server may return a general error notice indicating an important
   failure with referencing the request.  The element can be created
   either by the service, e.g., when a request cannot be decoded, but
   also by a client lower layer, e.g. when a connection cannot be
   established.

   XML Schema element

   <complexType>
    <element name="ErrorNotice" minOccurs="0">
       <sequence>
         <element name="ErrorIdentification" type="xs:int"/>
         <element name="ErrorInformation" type="xs:string"/>
       </sequence>
     </element>
   </complexType>

   ASN.1 Definition

   ErrorNotice::= SEQUENCE {
       errorIdentification INTEGER,
       errorInformation BIT STIRNG,
   }

5.3.  OperationResponse

   This structure is returned on a successful or unsuccessful operation
   of the service.  It references the initial request as well as the
   data that had been submitted.



Jerman Blazic, et al.    Expires April 26, 2007                [Page 27]


Internet-Draft                    LTAP                      October 2006


   XML Schema element

   <complexType name="OperationResponse">
    <sequence>
     <element name="RequestInformation" />
     <element name="Data" />
     <element name="StatusInformation" />
    </sequence>
   </complexType>

   ASN.1 Definition

   Response::= SEQUENCE {
       requestInformation RequestInformation ,
       data SEQUENCE OF Data ,
       serviceInformation ServiceInformation OPTIONAL
   }

5.4.  Response

   This structure is returned on a successful or unsuccessful operation
   of the service.

   XML Schema element

   <complexType>
    <choice>
     <element name="OperationResponse" >
     <element name="ErrorNotice" >
    </choice>
   </complexType>

   ASN.1 Definition

   Response::= CHOICE {
       response OperationResponse ,
       error [0] ErrorNotice
   }


6.  Service Operations

   This section describes in detail the different operations that a
   client can initiate with a request and their outcomes.  All
   operations share the same data types for the input and output but the
   choices are filled in differently.

   For all operations, the archive service may react in the following



Jerman Blazic, et al.    Expires April 26, 2007                [Page 28]


Internet-Draft                    LTAP                      October 2006


   ways.

   o  Error - The request is not understood or cannot be transmitted, an
      ErrorNotice is returned.

   o  Acceptance - The request is accepted, an OperationResponse
      indicating that the transaction is 'waiting'.

   o  Rejection - The request is rejected. an OperationResponse
      describing the error is returned.

   o  Result - This a final response, an OperationResponse containing
      the result of the transaction is returned.

6.1.  ARCHIVE operation

   The major operation of the archive service is the ARCHIVE operation.
   A client prepares the data and associated metadata, and transfers the
   request to the archive service

   When service returns acknowledgement only as an asynchronous
   notification, either the client has to perform a STATUS operation to
   determine the final outcome, or service pools client with service
   result status

   Client builds a Request with request information including service
   policy interpreting service characteristics and service configuration
   parameters.  Data to be archived and meta data are enclosed.

   o  the service type is set to "archive"

   o  If this is an initial request, the data are filled in with a
      rawData and a messageDigest.

   o  If this a retry of a previous operation, the client MAY choose
      either to simply repeat an identical operation, or remove the
      rawData and send the messageDigest and, if provided, an artifact.

   As a result the server responds with acknowledgement including
   service identification and data identification (artifact and/or
   message imprint is included) or service error.  Server may also
   include service result.

   The server MAY use an artifact an optimization feature when the
   StatusInformation is 'waiting', in order to simplify its processing
   when the client retries the operation.  When an operation is retried,
   the client SHOULD use the returned artifact.




Jerman Blazic, et al.    Expires April 26, 2007                [Page 29]


Internet-Draft                    LTAP                      October 2006


   The final response contains a data reference to be usable in other
   operations concerning the same data object.

6.2.  STATUS operation

   A client can request the status of a data object.

   Client builds a Request with request information including service
   policy interpreting service characteristics and service configuration
   parameters.

   o  The service type is set to "status".

   o  Data identification must be a data reference and/or a message
      imprint.

   In the final response, the LTA returns the current status and the
   metadata for the object.

6.3.  EXPORT operation

   This operation allows a client to retrieve data.

   o  Data identification must be a data reference and/or a message
      imprint.

   o  The service type is set to "export".

   In the final response, the LTA returns data and metadata of the
   object.

6.4.  VERIFY operation

   This operation allows a client to verify the authenticity of
   information stored in the archive.  Depending on the actual status of
   the object and on the policy of the LTA, the LTA initiates an
   internal procedure to determine the validity of the data.  The LTA
   MAY choose not to perform this proecdure for example if the actual
   status is sufficiently recent.  In this case, the operation is
   identical to STATUS operation.

   o  Data identification must be a data reference and/or a message
      imprint.

   o  The service type is set to "verify".

   The LTA returns updated metadata of the object.




Jerman Blazic, et al.    Expires April 26, 2007                [Page 30]


Internet-Draft                    LTAP                      October 2006


6.5.  DELETE operation

   This operation allows a client to delete data or request data
   shredding.  After a successful operation, the the server does not
   maintain any status information about the object.  Note that this
   does not mean that the server does not maintain a trace record of the
   delete operation.

   o  Data identification must include data itself or data reference or
      message imprint.

   o  The metadata MAY be set to replace the existing metadata of the
      object.

   o  The service type is set to "delete".

   The LTA returns the updated metadata (or nothing).


7.  Presentation and Bindings

   In the previous chapters we have presented all basic data types as
   well as XSD schema as in with ASN.1.  This is done in order to allow
   implentations work on both data syntaxes and to be able to present
   and transform messages in a defined way.

   TBD: Complete data structures.


8.  Security and Transport

   TBD: This chapter needs rework.

   TBD: LTAP requests may include security parameters in meta
   information section.

   TBD: Security may be provided using lower layers, e.g.  XML Security
   for XML syntax based requests/responses.

   The protocol consists of the exchange of data objects encoded as
   different CMS content types, i.e. requests and responses.  These data
   are optionally encapsulated by CMS content types that provide for
   authentication and/or confidentiality, e.g.  SignedData or
   EnvelopedData.

   This document describes the usage of a SignedData construct of
   [RFC3852], where the content type indicated in the eContentType of
   the encapContentInfo is one of the LTAP content types and the



Jerman Blazic, et al.    Expires April 26, 2007                [Page 31]


Internet-Draft                    LTAP                      October 2006


   eContent of the encapContentInfo, carried as an octet string
   containing an encoded request or response structure.

   When using a SignedData structure for authentication, an LTAP request
   and response MAY contain one or more SignerInfo structures, each of
   which may contain countersignature attributes depending on
   operational environments.  When an end user client creates a request,
   there is one SignerInfo.  A relaying LTA MAY add an additional
   signature or a countersignature attribute.

   Clients and relays MUST ensure authenticity of a server when
   submitting data.  In order to do so, they MAY add another
   encapsulation from [RFC3852] that provides for confidentiality,
   and/or MAY use a secure transport layer, e.g., TLS to perform server
   authentication and to ensure confidentiality of the transport.

   Responses are generally protected in similar way by using a
   SignedData encapsulation with one or more SignerInfos, and
   CounterSignatures, depending on the number of participating servers.
   The number of signatures is not related to the number of
   participating servers but rather to the number of entities that may
   be used to authenticate a response or part of it.

   In some circumstances, a client/server communication may be secured
   only by lower layer transport mechanism, e.g.  SSL/TLS.

   A client MUST NOT trust a response that cannot be authenticated.

   Archive clients and servers MUST always create requests and responses
   that can be authenticated with the explicit exception of a global
   error status, which may be returned as a non-signed response.

   There is no mandatory transport mechanism in this document.  All
   mechanisms are optional.  Two examples of transport protocols are
   given that allow online exchange of request and a response, and
   asynchronous communication between a client and an LTA.  A LTA MAY
   use a combination of protocols, for example in order to return
   additional responses.

   Protocol via HTTP or HTTPS: This subsection specifies means for
   conveying ASN.1-encoded messages for the LTAP protocol exchanges via
   the HyperText Transfer Protocol.  The DER encoded LTAP requests and
   responses are encapsulated using a simple MIME object with Content-
   Type application/ltans (and with the default binary encoding).  This
   MIME object can be sent and received using common HTTP or HTTPS
   processing engines and provides a simple client-server transport for
   ltans requests and responses.




Jerman Blazic, et al.    Expires April 26, 2007                [Page 32]


Internet-Draft                    LTAP                      October 2006


   A server MUST understand an HTTP 1.1 request together with chunked
   input of a POST request.  A server SHOULD understand a Content-
   Encoding value of gzip.  In case of a HTTP 1.0 request and response,
   a positive value Content-Length indicating the total size of the data
   MUST be used.  A clienst SHOULD send a Host header in the request.  A
   client MUST be able to react to the following status codes: TBC

   Protocol using Email: This section specifies a means for conveying
   ASN.1-encoded messages for the protocol exchanges described via
   Internet mail.  The DER encoded LTAP requests and responses are
   encapsulated using a simple MIME object with Content-Type
   application/ltans with an appropriate Content-Transfer-Encoding.
   This MIME object can be sent and received using MIME processing
   engines and provides a simple Internet mail transport for LTAP
   responses.

   In order to be able to associate a possible error response with a
   request, the requester SHOULD use the field 'transactionIdentifier'.
   The requester SHOULD not make any assumption about the usage of
   message header fields by the responding service, in particular the
   usage of fields like Subject, Message-ID or References.


9.  Credits

   This document has been created using XML2RFC ([RFC2629]).


10.  Security Considerations

   This section discusses addition security considerations of the
   framework.

   When designing an LTA service, the following considerations have been
   identified that have an impact upon the validity or "trust" in the
   ltans server responses.

   An LTA is assumed to operate with best effort.  Nevertheless, an
   operation can fail or get totally lost.  A client SHOULD be able to
   recover from lost requests, i.e., avoid deleting data until an
   attestation has been received.

   It is possible for an LTA to report loss of integrity for archived
   data, or simply non-existence of data which is equivalent to loss of
   data.  Depending on the value of the data, appropriate measures to
   address these catastrophic scenarios need to be provided outside the
   basic service, e.g., by using redundant copies managed either by a
   client of internally of a broker type service.



Jerman Blazic, et al.    Expires April 26, 2007                [Page 33]


Internet-Draft                    LTAP                      October 2006


   The validity of data should be checked by periodic execution of
   VERIFY operations intended to ensure data with demonstratable
   integrity is available throughout the lifetime of an archived data
   object.  The rate of refresh will be driven by a number of factors,
   some of which have a direct impact of demonstration of integrity.
   For example, the confidence in the strength of cryptographic
   algorithms or the quality of storage devices are factors determining
   the verification intervals.

   Depending on the lifetime and the quality of data, relying on
   cryptographic protection of data object may not be a sufficient means
   to determine authenticity in time, other means may be required, e.g.
   physical protection of data storage material.

   It is imperative that keys used to sign responses are guarded with
   proper security and controls in order to minimize the possibility of
   compromise.  Nevertheless, in case the private key does become
   compromised, an audit trail of all the response generated by the
   service SHOULD be kept as a means to help discriminate between
   genuine and false responses.  Aa LTA MAY provide for a service to
   validate responses created by this service or another one solely
   based on the audit trail.

   As already indicated, when confidentiality and server authentication
   is required, requests and responses MAY be protected using
   appropriate mechanisms (e.g., CMS encapsulation [RFC3369] or TLS
   [RFC3546]).

   Server authentication is highly recommended for all service which
   transfer data to a server.

   Client identification and authentication MAY use services defined by
   TLS ([RFC3546]) instead of, or in addition to, using a document or
   message protection format, e.g.  CMS.

   It is possible for an LTA to report loss of integrity for archived
   data, or simply non-existence of data which is equivalent to loss of
   data.  Depending on the value of the data, appropriate measures to
   address these catastrophic scenarios need to be provided outside the
   basic service, e.g., by using redundant copies managed either by a
   client of internally of a broker type service.


11.  IPR Patent Information

   The material presented in this document was initially drafted in
   2005.




Jerman Blazic, et al.    Expires April 26, 2007                [Page 34]


Internet-Draft                    LTAP                      October 2006


   The following United States Patents related to data validation and
   certification services, listed in chronological order, are known by
   the authors to exist at this time.  This may not be an exhaustive
   list.  Other patents may exist or be issued at any time.
   Implementers of this protocol and applications using the protocol
   SHOULD perform their own patent search and determine whether or not
   any encumberences exist on their implementation.  The list is
   intitially taken from [RFC3029].

   # 4,309,569 Method of Providing Digital Signatures
   (issued) January 5, 1982
   (inventor) Ralph C. Merkle
   (assignee) The Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior
   University

   # 5,001,752 Public/Key Date-Time Notary Facility
   (issued) March 19, 1991
   (inventor) Addison M. Fischer

   # 5,022,080 Electronic Notary
   (issued) June 4, 1991
   (inventors) Robert T. Durst, Kevin D. Hunter

   # 5,136,643 Public/Key Date-Time Notary Facility
   (issued) August 4, 1992
   (inventor) Addison M. Fischer

   (Note: This is a continuation of patent # 5,001,752.)
   # 5,136,646 Digital Document Time-Stamping with Catenate Certificate
   (issued) August 4, 1992
   (inventors) Stuart A. Haber, Wakefield S. Stornetta Jr.
   (assignee) Bell Communications Research, Inc.

   # 5,136,647 Method for Secure Time-Stamping of Digital Documents
   (issued) August 4, 1992
   (inventors) Stuart A. Haber, Wakefield S. Stornetta Jr.
   (assignee) Bell Communications Research, Inc.

   # 5,373,561 Method of Extending the Validity of a Cryptographic
   Certificate
   (issued) December 13, 1994
   (inventors) Stuart A. Haber, Wakefield S. Stornetta Jr.
   (assignee) Bell Communications Research, Inc.,

   # 5,422,95 Personal Date/Time Notary Device
   (issued) June 6, 1995
   (inventor) Addison M. Fischer




Jerman Blazic, et al.    Expires April 26, 2007                [Page 35]


Internet-Draft                    LTAP                      October 2006


   # 5,781,629 Digital Document Authentication System
   (issued) July 14, 1998
   (inventor) Stuart A. Haber, Wakefield S. Stornetta Jr.
   (assignee) Surety Technologies, Inc.



12.  IANA consideration

   None.


13.  References

13.1.  Normative references

   [I-D.ietf-ltans-ers]
              Brandner, R., "Evidence Record Syntax (ERS)",
              draft-ietf-ltans-ers-08 (work in progress), October 2006.

   [I-D.ietf-ltans-reqs]
              Wallace, C., "Long-Term Archive Service Requirements",
              draft-ietf-ltans-reqs-09 (work in progress), October 2006.

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

   [RFC3369]  Housley, R., "Cryptographic Message Syntax (CMS)",
              RFC 3369, August 2002.

   [RFC3546]  Blake-Wilson, S., Nystrom, M., Hopwood, D., Mikkelsen, J.,
              and T. Wright, "Transport Layer Security (TLS)
              Extensions", RFC 3546, June 2003.

   [RFC3852]  Housley, R., "Cryptographic Message Syntax (CMS)",
              RFC 3852, July 2004.

13.2.  Informative references

   [RFC2629]  Rose, M., "Writing I-Ds and RFCs using XML", RFC 2629,
              June 1999.

   [RFC3029]  Adams, C., Sylvester, P., Zolotarev, M., and R.
              Zuccherato, "Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure Data
              Validation and Certification Server Protocols", RFC 3029,
              February 2001.





Jerman Blazic, et al.    Expires April 26, 2007                [Page 36]


Internet-Draft                    LTAP                      October 2006


Appendix A.  ASN.1 module

   The following ASN.1 module has been checked using the asn1c tool.

   LTANS_LTAP
   --OID TBD

   DEFINITIONS IMPLICIT TAGS ::=

   BEGIN

   -- EXPORTS ALL maybe not --




Appendix B.  XML schema


   to be done.



Authors' Addresses

   Aleksej Jerman Blazic
   SETCCE
   Jamova 39
   Ljubljana  SI-1000
   SLOVENIA

   Fax:   +386 1 4773861
   Email: aljosa@setcce.org


   Peter Sylvester
   EdelWeb
   15 quai de Dion-Bouton
   Puteaux  F-92816
   FRANCE

   Fax:   +33 1 40 99 14 14
   Email: Peter.Sylvester@edelweb.fr








Jerman Blazic, et al.    Expires April 26, 2007                [Page 37]


Internet-Draft                    LTAP                      October 2006


   Carl Wallace
   Orion Security Solutions
   Suite 300
   1489 Chain Bridge Road
   McLean, VA  22101

   Fax:   +1 703 9170260
   Email: cwallace@orionsec.com











































Jerman Blazic, et al.    Expires April 26, 2007                [Page 38]


Internet-Draft                    LTAP                      October 2006


Full Copyright Statement

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2006).

   This document is subject to the rights, licenses and restrictions
   contained in BCP 78, and except as set forth therein, the authors
   retain all their rights.

   This document and the information contained herein are provided on an
   "AS IS" basis and THE CONTRIBUTOR, THE ORGANIZATION HE/SHE REPRESENTS
   OR IS SPONSORED BY (IF ANY), THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET
   ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED,
   INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE
   INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED
   WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.


Intellectual Property

   The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any
   Intellectual Property Rights or other rights that might be claimed to
   pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in
   this document or the extent to which any license under such rights
   might or might not be available; nor does it represent that it has
   made any independent effort to identify any such rights.  Information
   on the procedures with respect to rights in RFC documents can be
   found in BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Copies of IPR disclosures made to the IETF Secretariat and any
   assurances of licenses to be made available, or the result of an
   attempt made to obtain a general license or permission for the use of
   such proprietary rights by implementers or users of this
   specification can be obtained from the IETF on-line IPR repository at
   http://www.ietf.org/ipr.

   The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any
   copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary
   rights that may cover technology that may be required to implement
   this standard.  Please address the information to the IETF at
   ietf-ipr@ietf.org.


Acknowledgment

   Funding for the RFC Editor function is provided by the IETF
   Administrative Support Activity (IASA).





Jerman Blazic, et al.    Expires April 26, 2007                [Page 39]