checkId: doctor.evidence.timestamp.tsa.valid-response family: doctor-check/v1 service: evidence-web scope: installation severity: critical tags: [timestamping, tsa, rfc3161, validation, evidence]

TSA Valid Response

Stella Ops is self-hosted software. It does not issue electronic time stamps or provide any qualified trust service. This deployment performs local verification using operator-supplied evidence. Unless an approved jurisdiction-, provider-, service-, and deployment-specific claim profile applies, qualified status is not determined.

Verifies that the TSA returns an ACCEPTED response carrying a timestamp token whose nonce and message imprint match the request that was sent. Correlation is the property a URL-level probe can never assert: an answer from the right address is not an answer to the request we made. Default severity when it fails: critical. Installation-scoped: one result per estate, served on the Evidence doctor path and probed on the worker schedule active-probes (every 15 minutes).

What it measures

The check never reports a pass for a value it does not have. When its source cannot be read it reports unhealthy with the message Source unavailable (<reason>): <detail>. No verdict can be reported. and the evidence keys source.state=unavailable, source.reason (one of source-not-configured, source-configuration-invalid, unavailable-by-sealed-policy, source-material-invalid, source-read-failed) and source.detail.

Evidence keys

Every value is a bounded measurement or pointer; no token bytes, trust material or credentials appear in evidence.

Common causes

Configuration

The TSA path is configured on BOTH Evidence roles (the compose file carries the keys in the shared x-evidence-runtime anchor, so the web role’s doctor and the worker’s schedules read the same graph):

Evidence__TimestampAssurance__Adapters__PrimaryProviderId: "local-tsa"
Evidence__TimestampAssurance__Adapters__Providers__0__ProviderId: "local-tsa"
Evidence__TimestampAssurance__Adapters__Providers__0__Endpoint: "http://tsa.stella-ops.local:318/"
Evidence__TimestampAssurance__Adapters__Providers__0__Requirement: "Mandatory"   # or Optional
Evidence__TimestampAssurance__Adapters__Providers__0__AllowPlaintextHttp: "true"  # compose-internal TSA only
Evidence__TimestampAssurance__Adapters__Providers__0__AllowPrivateNetwork: "true"
Evidence__TimestampAssurance__Adapters__AllowedHosts__0: "tsa.stella-ops.local"

Every outbound probe passes the Timestamp Assurance egress guard: the host must be on AllowedHosts, the resolved address must satisfy the provider’s private-network posture, and the connection is pinned to the vetted address. In a sealed estate (AirGap__Egress__Mode=Sealed) the estate policy is evaluated BEFORE DNS and classifies by host string, so a compose-internal TSA named by hostname is refused even with AllowPrivateNetworks=true; name it through an explicit AirGap allow rule or an IP-literal endpoint.

How to verify

The 17 installation checks are served by evidence-web on the shared doctor-check/v1 path and need the ops.health scope. Probe the service DIRECTLY from inside the estate network: the gateway’s unprefixed /doctor/evidence/checks resolves to whichever service registered that template first, not to Evidence.

curl -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer $OPS_HEALTH_TOKEN" \
  http://evidence-web.stella-ops.local:8080/doctor/evidence/checks \
  | jq '.checks[] | select(.checkId == "doctor.evidence.timestamp.tsa.valid-response")'

Once the Evidence doctor registration is activated (it is off by default in a sealed estate), the same result is also visible through the Platform doctor aggregator under the evidence service.

This is a local evidentiary classification of the token and issuing service at the stated time. It is not the output of a qualified validation or qualified preservation service and does not determine the legal effect of the underlying release, document, or transaction.