Cellebrite CCPA Practice Test 2026 – Your All-in-One Resource to Master the Certification!

Unix timestamps are defined as the number of seconds elapsed since a fixed starting point called the epoch. The epoch is January 1, 1970 at 00:00:00 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). This origin was chosen to simplify time calculations and keep timestamps portable across Unix systems, so a timestamp value of zero represents exactly that moment. Times are stored as seconds relative to this moment, with conversions to local time zones done as needed. Leap seconds aren’t counted in the basic Unix time count, which is part of why the epoch sits at midnight UTC. Historically, 32-bit time representations raised the 2038 problem on some systems, but many modern platforms use 64-bit time to avoid this.