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This document states plainly what Birdbrain’s chain-of-custody controls defend against, what they deliberately do not, and why the default trusted-timestamp authority is DigiCert. It is the reference a brief or an expert declaration can cite. Scope: the on-disk audit manifest (hash chain + signatures, #115/#117) and RFC 3161 trusted timestamping (#120).

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The two independent axes

Birdbrain reports integrity and trusted time as separate, orthogonal axes. Conflating them is the usual way a custody argument gets muddied; keeping them apart is deliberate. A byte-perfect capture is integrity-verified whether or not it carries a trusted timestamp. Lacking a timestamp is not an integrity failure. It is an empty (or pending) trusted-time axis. The trusted-time axis has three states: rfc3161 (a TSA token attests the content hash), pending (an eligible capture awaiting its token), and none (a grandfathered legacy capture that predates timestamping).

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What the manifest signature defends against, and what it does not

The per-entry signature over each manifest entryHash (#117) raises the bar against casual tampering. Copying the case directory elsewhere and editing a capture, a hash, or a chain link with ordinary tools will fail verification. The forged entry no longer carries a signature that validates against the installation’s public key, and re-hashing one entry breaks every downstream link. It does not defend against a determined operator running Birdbrain’s own code as themselves. Where an OS credential store is available (DPAPI on Windows, Keychain on macOS, a Linux Secret Service provider such as gnome-keyring, via Electron safeStorage), Birdbrain wraps the signing key at rest with it. Even then, an operator who controls the running process controls the key and can, in principle, mint a fresh internally consistent chain. This is an inherent limit of any locally-held signing key and is stated here so no one over-claims it in a brief. Wrapping at rest is conditional, not guaranteed. On an installation with no usable credential store, typically a headless or keyring-less Linux install, Birdbrain does not silently degrade. On first run it refuses to generate a signing key until the operator explicitly acknowledges that the private key will be written to disk as a bare PEM, unprotected. Declining quits the app with no key written. Once acknowledged, Settings → Diagnostics reports the resulting state (protected or plaintext), so a declaration can state which case applies to the installation that produced the evidence rather than assuming the wrapped one. An unprotected key widens the threat above from “an operator who controls the running process” to “anyone with file access to the machine”. The RFC 3161 token is the independent anchor that constrains this gap. Because an external TSA issues the timestamp over the content hash, it establishes that the captured bytes existed no later than the stamped time, a fact the operator cannot back-date or forge, regardless of their control over the local machine. Integrity proves the bytes are unchanged; trusted time proves when they existed; together they are far harder to dispute than either alone.

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Why DigiCert is the default TSA (decision D6 / #112)

The default RFC 3161 endpoint is DigiCert’s unauthenticated service http://timestamp.digicert.com. The legal-defense rationale:
  • Ubiquitous trust anchor. The DigiCert Trusted Root G4 (and the Assured ID root that cross-signs it) is present out of the box in essentially every OS, browser, and document-verification trust store an opposing expert or a court is likely to use. Verification with stock openssl ts -verify succeeds offline against a root the verifier already trusts, with no special configuration and no “trust us” step. (Confirmed: see tests/fixtures/timestamp/README.md, where a real DigiCert token returns Verification: OK against only the bundled root.)
  • No account, no key, works out of the box. The endpoint is unauthenticated, so timestamping functions on first run with nothing to provision and no credential that could be argued to compromise independence.
  • De-facto forensic / Authenticode default. DigiCert is the timestamp authority behind a large share of Authenticode-signed software and is a routine choice in forensic tooling. “We used the same trusted-timestamp authority that underpins code-signing across the industry” is the strongest defensible in a brief story available without a paid relationship.
The endpoint is configurable in Settings for jurisdictions or engagements that require a specific TSA. Free/hobbyist authorities (e.g. freetsa.org) are a documented development/test fallback only. Their roots are not in common trust stores and should not anchor evidence.

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Canonical verification path

In-app trusted-time display performs structural parsing only. It confirms the token’s message imprint matches the capture’s content hash and shows the TSA identity and stamped time. The canonical, court-facing verification is stock openssl ts -verify against the TSA chain (decision D5 / #113); Birdbrain never hand-rolls CMS signature cryptography. This keeps the authoritative check in a ubiquitous, independently-audited tool rather than in Birdbrain’s own code.