Public verification. Private evidence.
Everything Provena preserves can be verified independently — by a court, an opposing party, an expert, an auditor — with or without a Provena account. And verifying never opens the evidence: the check answers whether a record matches, not what it contains. Who reads the report stays your decision.
Paste a code. Or drop a file.
The public check answers one question — does this match what was preserved? — and asks nothing back. No account, no authorization, no copy of your file.
- A session code is enough — PRV-7Q4M-K2XN-9DPT confirms a preserved session and its public verification context.
- Your file never leaves your machine. The browser computes its fingerprint (a SHA-512 hash) locally and sends only the fingerprint and the filename — sensitive material stays private.
- The answer is a comparison, not an opinion: the hashes match or they don't. Provena has no say in the result.
- Verification without exposure: a match tells the reviewer the record is intact — not what's inside it. Report access stays under its owner's control.
- Checks join the record: public checks are themselves written to the custody chain as access events — the trail keeps growing even during review.
Five checks, from a single file to the whole chain.
Each check stands on its own, and each one strengthens the others. A reviewer picks the depth the matter requires.
A file
Hash a local file and ask whether it matches a preserved record. A match supports one precise statement: this exact file, byte for byte, is the one preserved in that session.
The package
Recompute the SHA-512 of the evidence package (a plain ZIP file) and compare it with the hash shown in the report — and, if the package was anchored, with the value carried by the external record.
The manifest
Open the package and check the inventory: every listed file present, with the expected name, path, size, and hash. Missing, unexpected, or substituted contents show up here.
The custody chain
Recompute every event hash and follow each link back to the previous event. If the chain reproduces, the recorded sequence is internally consistent; if it doesn't, the break points at alteration, deletion, or reordering.
The external proofs
Open the anchor's public reference — a blockchain transaction, a timestamp record — and confirm it carries the same hash the report shows. Every confirmed production anchor is one more independent party saying the record existed then.
Technical reviewers can go further still — comparing the captured TLS certificates, IPs, and DNS records with public sources to review the remote origin observed during capture.
The full check, without asking Provena.
If a matter ever demands an audit fully independent of Provena, this is that audit. After one download, the entire review runs on tools that have nothing to do with us — the hash utility your system already ships, scripts in your team's own programming language, public explorers. Each comparison feeds the next, and the conclusion rests on the whole chain of checks — not on any single screen.
Provena participates once: handing over the package and the custody export. Everything after that would work exactly the same if Provena were offline.
Don't trust our screens. Run your own.
Provena is the execution engine for the capture — not the source of truth for its integrity. That's why every report ships an audit guide with commands and working scripts, and why the package is a plain ZIP with standard SHA-512 hashes: the tools your systems already have are enough.
- Scripts in your team's language — Python, Node.js, Java, C#, or plain Bash with jq and sha512sum. Each one recomputes every event hash and follows every link, with no Provena software in the loop.
- When a check fails, it says why: a GAP in the sequence, a BROKEN_LINK between events, TAMPERED_CONTENT inside one — precise findings, not a red X.
- The hashing recipe is public. Every event ships the exact text that was hashed, built by published rules — recomputing it takes no reverse engineering, and no permission from Provena.
- Everything an expert needs ships with the record — the package, the report, the custody export, captured TLS certificates, and the proof files. The tools are the expert's own: hash utilities, OpenSSL, public explorers.
The audit guide in every report walks through each layer with commands, working scripts, and the expected results.
Built for the reviewer who shows up years later.
Verification doesn't need the original operator, a Provena account, or Provena's goodwill. The package, the manifest, the custody export, and the external references keep answering — in litigation, audit, or disclosure, long after capture.