Semantic Hash for Advanced Document Electronic Signature – SHADES

The SHADES project is an interdisciplinary project dealing with the security of documents involving organizations and researchers both from computer science and law domains. The objective of this project is to provide a new tool for authenticating the entirety of the content of a document through an advanced compact signature in order to fight against fraud and falsification. This signature will be based on the document’s content (text and graphics) and structure (spatial relationships) what we call a semantic signature. Thanks to a hashing of the document’s information during the signature computation, no information from the original document will be deduced from its signature alone. The signature can then be inserted in the document or used in company content management software in order to check the authenticity of the document without compromising its confidentiality. Moreover, this content-based signature will allow for several security levels such as the true copy of a document and the content-reliable copy (the same content, but not the same layout) of a document. This technological study will be completed by a study on the legal position of this technology and its interest for legal professionals. The project will be conducted in collaboration with a trusted third party as end-user.