fiverify

Offline validation of France Identité attestation PDFs — the PAdES-T qualified electronic seal issued by the French Ministry of the Interior.

Offline by default: nothing opens a socket unless you ask for it. Trust anchors, validation time and revocation data are inputs.

Install

pip install fiverify

Or from a clone, to work on it: pip install -e . (pip install --user -e . outside a virtualenv).

Python 3.11+. Pulls in asn1crypto and cryptography; nothing else.

Quick start

fi-verify attestation.pdf --fetch-revocation
fi-verify attestation.pdf --accept-unchecked-revocation

from fiverify import Status, verify_file

# Fetch the CRLs the certificates name — the only network access in the project.
report = verify_file("attestation.pdf", fetch_revocation=True, extract_attributes=True)

# Or stay fully offline, accepting that revocation status is unknown.
report = verify_file("attestation.pdf", accept_unchecked_revocation=True, extract_attributes=True)

if report.status is Status.PASSED:
    print(report.attributes)          # identity fields, only ever from verified bytes
else:
    print(report.status.value, [c.summary for c in report.failures()])

That is the complete check: signature, coverage, timestamp, chain to the eIDAS anchor, and revocation. examples/ holds a signed document and two forgeries of it, to try without a real attestation.

Revocation

The default (verify_pdf(...) with no revocation argument) returns INDETERMINATE, never PASSED — with no revocation data the tool cannot honestly say a certificate was good. Your options, least to most trusting:

Revocation is evaluated at the signing timestamp, not now, so a certificate revoked afterward doesn't invalidate the seal — and only if that timestamp came from a TSA that chains to an anchor, since an untrusted one would be free to back-date the seal past the revocation. --strict-revocation requires a CRL issued after that timestamp rather than one merely in force over it — the stronger guarantee needed for archival validation.

--fetch-revocation downloads only what an anchored certificate names, and only over HTTP(S): a distribution point is a URL chosen by whoever wrote the document, so fetching one before its certificate reaches a trust anchor would make verification a fetch primitive. To pin the hosts as well, fetch separately with fetch_for_pdf(data, allowed_hosts=[...]) and pass the store in.

Identity attributes

Fields like familyName, givenName, birthdate are not extracted unless you ask (--attributes / extract_attributes=True), and are only ever returned from bytes covered by a signature that reaches a trust anchor — a document can be forged so the seal still verifies while content changed underneath it (see examples/forged-append.pdf), or simply signed by its author's own certificate, and report.attributes stays None rather than trusting that content.

Reading the report

report.status                            # PASSED | FAILED | INDETERMINATE
report.caveats                           # what was not checked, e.g. revocation
report.attributes                        # identity fields, if asked and verified
report.failures()                        # [Check(...), ...]
report.signatures[0].details             # signer, chain, gen_time, algorithms, …
report.to_dict()                         # JSON-safe

Results are three-valued, per ETSI EN 319 102-1. Every Check carries an id, a severity, an ETSI sub_indication, and the evidence behind it. strict=True makes profile expectations fatal rather than indeterminate.

Exit codes: 0 passed, 1 failed, 2 indeterminate, 3 usage or I/O error. Add --json for the full report, -v to include passing informational checks.

Profiles and trust anchors

Everything document-specific — policy OIDs, algorithm allow-lists, trust anchors and their SHA-256 pins — lives in src/fiverify/profiles/france-identite.toml, not in code. Chains terminate at AC SERVEUR CACHET EIDAS 2025, the eIDAS trust anchor itself (listed in the French Trusted List), pinned by fingerprint in the profile.

fi-verify doc.pdf --profile my.toml --anchor extra-ca.pem --at 2027-01-01

tools/tsl-anchors.py --verify reproduces the bundled anchor from the live EU/FR trusted lists rather than asking you to take it on trust; see the tool for rollover instructions.

What it does not do

• OCSP. CRLs only. A responder URL is reported, not queried.
• Embedded revocation data (PAdES-LT /DSS). Long-term validation of an old document depends on a CRL that still lists it.
• PDF object-graph parsing. A revision appended after signing is reported as uncovered content, not classified — fine for single-signature documents, not yet for counter-signed ones.

Tests

pip install pytest && python3 -m pytest

88 tests, offline, no fixtures checked in — generated against a throwaway PKI, with every signature-arithmetic verdict cross-checked against openssl.