How to generate and send an RFC3161 timestamp with OpenSSL and curl

For me the blog is this odd mix of diary and technical notes, this time I guess the post is more of a technical note – here is a quick guide on how to generate RFC 3161 time-stamps using OpenSSL and curl.

 

1. Create the file you will want to timestamp

 

copy con inputfile.txt

This is my test file.

^Z

 

2. Generate a timestamp request

 

openssl ts -query -data inputfile.txt -cert -sha256 -no_nonce -out request.tsq

 

3. Send the request to your timestamp server

 

curl -k -H “Content-Type: application/timestamp-query” -H Host:timestamp.globalsign.com –data-binary @request.tsq “http://timestamp.globalsign.com”  >inputfile.txt.tsr

 

4. Verify the timestamp response

 

openssl ts -reply -in inputfile.txt.tsr -text

 

This is going to give you some output that looks something like this:

 

Using configuration from C:\OpenSSL-Win64\bin\openssl.cfg

Status info:

Status: Granted.

Status description: unspecified

Failure info: unspecified

TST info:

Version: 1

Policy OID: 1.3.6.1.4.1.4146.2.2

Hash Algorithm: sha256

Message data:

    0000 - 58 df 63 8c 5b bf ff ca-ad 13 c9 6e 93 96 cd 25   X.c.[……n…%

    0010 - 66 5e f1 eb ba 8e 7f 74-6d 65 04 3c 5d ea e4 35   f^…..tme.<]..5

Serial number: 0x2487F5EA8A5A085844ED68A8A7426E07E692E1BD

Time stamp: Sep 17 05:08:38 2013 GMT

Accuracy: unspecified

Ordering: no

Nonce: unspecified

TSA: DirName:/C=SG/O=GMO GlobalSign Pte Ltd/CN=GlobalSign TSA for Standard - G1

Extensions:

It’s that easy.