How do I create a signed document without getting the dreaded "This signers identity is invalid" / AATL woes

Hi guys,

We are using Aspose.Words to digitally sign our generated pdfs, this works great but when viewed within Adobe pdf reader we are seeing “This signers identity is invalid” highlighted by the signature having one or more problems.

Digging in deeper it seems this is due to our certificates CA not being in the list of trusted providers managed by Adobes AATL list (Adobe Approved Trust List Members, Acrobat). We can get around this by trusting it explicitly however this is not an option for our customers.

Going through the certificate list of trusted certificate providers by Adobe it seems all of these require a usb device to manually sign a document, not sure Microsoft will be keen on letting us plug that into their cloud. Also I have yet to see any with access to a pfx file.

Do you have any knowledge of any certificate authorities we can use that provide a pfx? The main impact for us is that customers may be concerned about the authenticity of the document if the signature is treated as suspicious?

@paulkerry,

Please compress the following resources into ZIP format and attach the .zip file here for testing:

  • A simplified source Word document
  • Aspose.Words v21.7 generated signed PDF file showing the undesired behavior
  • A PFX certificate file
  • Please also create a standalone simplified Console Application (source code without compilation errors) that helps us to reproduce this problem on our end and attach it here for testing. Please do not include Aspose.Words DLL files in it to reduce the file size.

As soon as you get these pieces of information ready, we will then start investigation into your particular scenario and provide you more information.