Modification Detection and Prevention Certificate Application Breaks PDFA/3-u Standard
When applying a Modification Detection and Prevention certificate to a PDF/A-3u file Acrobat Pro DC adds DigestLocation, DigestMethod, and DigestValue entries to the signature references dictionary. That's not permitted by the PDF/A-3u standard. Thus it breaks conformance.
Certifying PDFs in this way and complying with the PDF/A-3u standards both are part of our larger goal of long-term preservation.
See also: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2566790
and https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2560568
Dan Kerr
shared this idea
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Now, five years on, I'm still holding out hope that this issue might get fixed. Here are updated links to the original forum posts:
https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat-discussions/how-to-certify-a-pdf-so-that-it-remains-compliant-with-pdf-a-3u/m-p/10263511
https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat-discussions/digitally-signing-a-pdf-a-3u-file-breaks-the-standard/td-p/10136505For anyone else who comes across this post, we have been using the certification tools from PDFtools which do allow us to apply a MDP certificate which doesn't break conformance with the standard.
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Joachim Seifert
commented
I agree - a work-around is using signatures but semantically a certification is more apt, as you certify that the document is valid and can be archived