Signatures to Go: A Framework for Qualified PDF Signing on Mobile Devices

Emina Ahmetovic, Thomas Lenz, Christian Kollmann

2020

Abstract

Electronic documents are an important part of a business workflow. To assure the integrity, authenticity, and non-repudiation of those documents, both public and private sectors use qualified electronic signatures to sign PDF files. Benefits of the resulting qualified PDF signing are widely recognized, and there are many desktop and web applications used to sign PDFs. Those applications usually require additional hardware, such as smartphones, or smart cards, to assure a multi-factor authentication in the signing process. However, the prevalence of mobile devices in everyday life posed a need for public services, which can be executed on a single mobile device. In this paper, we develop a user-friendly and privacy-preserving framework for qualified PDF signing on mobile devices. We show the feasibility of our framework by implementing all necessary components: the PDF processing application, the Trust Service Provider server-side, and client-side application. The main focus of these components is to preserve the privacy of users and to meet user expectations regarding the functionalities of PDF signing applications. Furthermore, we demonstrate the practical applicability of our solution by integrating it into the productive Austrian e-Government system. Lastly, we conclude the paper with extensive performance evaluation.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Ahmetovic E., Lenz T. and Kollmann C. (2020). Signatures to Go: A Framework for Qualified PDF Signing on Mobile Devices.In Proceedings of the 17th International Joint Conference on e-Business and Telecommunications - Volume 3: SECRYPT, ISBN 978-989-758-446-6, pages 330-339. DOI: 10.5220/0009821303300339

in Bibtex Style

@conference{secrypt20,
author={Emina Ahmetovic and Thomas Lenz and Christian Kollmann},
title={Signatures to Go: A Framework for Qualified PDF Signing on Mobile Devices},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 17th International Joint Conference on e-Business and Telecommunications - Volume 3: SECRYPT,},
year={2020},
pages={330-339},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0009821303300339},
isbn={978-989-758-446-6},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 17th International Joint Conference on e-Business and Telecommunications - Volume 3: SECRYPT,
TI - Signatures to Go: A Framework for Qualified PDF Signing on Mobile Devices
SN - 978-989-758-446-6
AU - Ahmetovic E.
AU - Lenz T.
AU - Kollmann C.
PY - 2020
SP - 330
EP - 339
DO - 10.5220/0009821303300339