LIBRARY
Standards
What a validator is actually looking at when it opens a signed PDF, and which published specification defines each part of it.
Product status
OctoDoc-specific descriptions of proof files, public verification, read links, reading logs, AATL or B-LTA trust, and Object Lock on this page describe post-v1.0 designs, not capabilities in the current product. The cited standards and primary-source facts remain educational references.
01
Why a level, and not just a signature
A signature that verifies today and cannot be verified in ten years is not a record. The difference between those two outcomes is entirely a question of what was archived into the file at the moment of signing, and that is what the baseline levels describe.
OctoDoc's post-v1.0 trust design targets the highest baseline level and a proof file that states the level reached. These pages exist because the specifications are public but almost nothing explains them in terms of what stops working when a level is absent.
CONTENTS
Everything in this section
standards
- The PAdES baseline levels
PAdES defines four baseline levels: B-B carries the signature and the signing certificate, B-T adds a third-party attestation that the signature already existed, B-LT embeds the certificates and revocation answers needed to validate the file with no network, and B-LTA timestamps that material so the evidence can be renewed before the cryptography beneath it ages out.