Certificate Transparency as an Evidence Source
Public certificate transparency (CT) logs record every publicly trusted SSL/TLS certificate issued for a domain, including the issuance date and the certificate authority. Because these logs are independently maintained and effectively tamper-proof, they provide a reliable, third-party-verified timeline of when a domain was actively serving content over HTTPS — useful for corroborating or contradicting claims about when a site went live.
Reading Certificate Data Alongside DNS and Archive Records
Certificate issuance dates are most useful cross-referenced against DNS change history and archived content captures: a new certificate issued at the same time a domain's name servers changed and its archived content shifted from a parked page to active use paints a far clearer operational picture than any one source alone.