First, Adobe Acrobat and Reader will IMMEDIATELY invalidate a ByteRange that is 
more than 2 pairs.   So anything with multiple ranges won't validate.

Second, ETSI/ESI STF364 is going to be working on the "parallel signatures 
problem" during Phase 3 of their work.  The current thoughts to address the 
problem revolve around the use of multiple signerInfos inside of a single 
PKCS#7 block, just as it is done in CAdES.

Leonard


On 5/22/09 6:38 PM, "Aldo Buratti" <[email protected]> wrote:

Many thanks for your quick replies.
I was not able to find all those detailed references without your
help ..

I understand that the free/wild use of ByteRange could create
signatures hard to validate, or even hard to visualise (.. what the
hell the user has signed ? ..).

However, these recommendations are just practical constraints imposed
for an easy/robust validation procedure. My hope is that the
validation procedure could be extended for handling these cases.
My experiment is an hacking work aimed to demonstrate a practical
solution to the parallel-signatures problem.
Of course this solution works only if the (Acrobat) validator
acknowledges this uncommon use of ByteRange.

Try to imagine a certified document with 2 or more empty signature
fields (like the one attached in my original email).
Suppose each signature could be appended as a revision-block of
exactly N bytes.
Let's say there're 3 signers S1, S2, S3 working independently.
Then, the 2nd signer could sign the original certified document by
simply appending 1 dummy-blocks of N bytes (for the unknown S1's
signature) , and then its own signature. (this signature's byterange
should of course exclude the  dummy-block)
In a similar manner, the 3rd signer should sign the original document
by appending 2 dummy-blocks (for S1 and S2) before its signature ...

At the end we could collect the 3 pdfs signed by S1, S2 and S3, cut
the signature blocks and paste them together in a new definitive pdf
(like the one I attached in my original email).

Resuming:
* All the signers sign have a copy of the same certified document and
they work in parallel, independently.  It's not important the time-
order of the signatures; it is important only the spatial-order of the
signatures, that is,  signer Sn should append n-1 dummy-blocks before
its signature.
* The signed copies are collected and merged in a single pdf
containing the original certified document and all the signatures.

What do you think ?
Should we consider valid such document or can you highlight some
vulnerabilties ?

Thanks in advance for your precious help.


Aldo


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Leonard Rosenthol
PDF Standards Architect
Adobe Systems Incorporated
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