XAdES support in Microsoft Office

Since Microsoft office 2007 adopted the OpenXML format as a standard for documents, spreadsheets and presentations, the digital signing format is now based on XML also called XMLDsig.

Office 2010 suite supports the advanced signature standards for XML called XAdES and a range of more complicated digest algorithms such as SHA-256 and SHA-512.

However, the default option remains a basic compliance with  XMLDsig which has many drawbacks in respect to issues related  to long term verification, certificate injection e.t.c

To set manually the security settings - open the registry editor and navigate to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\Signatures

Create a DWORD entry:

XAdESLevel

The values can be:

0 - No XAdES

1 - XAdES - EPS 

2 - XAdES - T (for digital timestamping)

3 - XAdES - C

4 - XAdES - X

5 - XAdeS - X - L

Create a DWORD entry:

MinXAdESLevel

The values can be

0 - No minimum level

1 - Minimum level is XAdES EPS

2 - Minimum level is XAdES - T

3 - Minimum level is XAdES - c

4 - Minimum level is XAdES - X

5 - Minimum level is XAdES - X - L

Create a String entry:

SignatureHashAlg

The values can be

sha1

sha256

sha384

sha512

Create a String entry:

TSALocation

The value should be a URL to an RFC 3161 compliant time-stamp authority service.

Visit http://www.comsigntrust.com for advanced e-signing solutions.