Skip to content
Data-centric zero trust for documents

Trust that travels with the file

Create, share, verify, and protect documents using cryptographic trust, verifiable provenance, and zero-trust access control - online or fully disconnected.

Zero Trust ArchitectureNIST SP 800-207 alignedAppend-only transparencyOpen specification
osdf verify contract.osdf
PASS

Document

Signature

Verification

Policy

Secure Access

containersafe · passive profile
integritysha-256 · merkle root ✓
signatureed25519 · issuer resolved
freshnessrevision 7 · current
Zero Trust ArchitectureNIST SP 800-207 alignedAppend-only transparencyOpen specificationMemory-safe Rust coreWebAssembly verifier
Performance

Verification you can measure

OSDF verifies cryptographic integrity locally, with no network or remote-service dependency - fast enough for operational and contested environments.

Sub-millisecond

Local verification

0.2-0.6 ms typical, online or fully offline

0%

Fail-closed on tamper

Every byte is declared, or the package is rejected

0×

Headroom under sub-5s targets

Verification orders of magnitude below requirement

SHA-256 + Ed25519

End-to-end cryptography

SHA-256 and Ed25519 today; AES-256-GCM envelope encryption coming soon

Open R&D

Research Challenge

OSDF is investigating whether portable, self-verifying evidence containers can provide scalable cryptographic provenance, fail-closed rendering, and compliance-ready access evidence without depending on a centralized repository.

The model

Three guarantees, never collapsed into one badge

OSDF separates the concepts that legacy formats conflate - so a viewer can tell you exactly what is safe, what is verified, and what is authorized.

Safe to open

Containment by design

A passive package that cannot carry JavaScript, macros, executables, or auto-fetched content. A strict allowlist parser rejects undeclared bytes, traversal, and active behavior - before anything renders.

  • Passive-by-default schema
  • Sandboxed legacy PDF import
  • Fail-closed strict parsing
Verify integrity

Cryptographic provenance

Every revision is canonicalized, hashed, linked to its parent, and signed. Signed Merkle roots and an append-only transparency log make modification, deletion, and rollback detectable.

  • Ed25519 scoped signatures
  • Hash-linked revision chain
  • Transparency log freshness
Control access

Zero-trust authorization

Policy travels with the data. Envelope encryption, enrolled device keys, identity-aware policy, and short-lived leases release plaintext only when the request satisfies policy - at the data layer.

  • Per-document envelope keys
  • Identity + device-bound leases
  • Compartment-level policy
Government & Defense

Defense Use Cases

Portable, self-verifying evidence containers for programs that need cryptographic accountability in contested, compliance-bound, and disconnected operations.

CUI document chain of custody

Track controlled unclassified information from origin through every transfer and access event.

Tamper-evident audit evidence packages

Export sealed packages that prove integrity and lineage for auditors and investigators.

Disconnected verification for contested environments

Verify documents and access decisions without network reach to a central repository.

SIEM-exportable access and integrity evidence

Emit structured access and integrity events for SIEM ingestion and continuous monitoring.

Government & Enterprise

Zero-trust enforcement where network controls can't reach

Protection and policy travel with the data object - so a file stays tamper-evident, policy-bound, and decryptable only through an authorized access decision, even after it leaves your network.

Zero-trust at the data layer

Policy enforcement that reaches where network controls cannot - the file itself.

Standards-aligned

Built around NIST SP 800-207 zero-trust principles and validated-module crypto profiles.

Works in contested environments

Fail-closed verification and bounded offline leases for disconnected and degraded operation.

Customer-controlled keys

No universal master key. Organizations hold their own roots; we never bulk-decrypt.

zsh
# Verify a document - online or fully offline$ osdf verify contract.osdf # Inspect the declared object inventory$ osdf inspect contract.osdf --manifest # Review the revision chain and ledger proofs$ osdf inspect contract.osdf --revisions
Open spec
SDKs
APIs
Developers

Verifiable by anyone. No vendor lock-in.

The format, verification algorithm, schemas, and test vectors are public. A memory-safe Rust core compiles to native binaries and WebAssembly, with bindings for the languages your stack already uses.

  • Rust core + WASM verifier
  • JavaScript, Python, Go SDKsComing soon
  • Hosted Verification & Ledger APIsComing soon
  • Conformance test vectors
Get started

The future of trusted documents

Bring cryptographic verification, verifiable provenance, and zero-trust access control to every document your organization creates and receives.