Authenticate digital objects

Authenticating an asset means checking if the asset is present in the ledger in Trustcenter. If the asset is present, the command returns the status of the asset.

• if the status is trusted, the exit code of the command is 0
• if the status is untrusted, the exit code of the command is 1
• if the status is unsupported, the exit code of the command is 3

If the asset is not present, the command returns an error message (with exit code 2).

The basic syntax is as follows:

$ vcn authenticate <asset>

You can use short form of the command:
$ vcn a instead of vcn authenticate

You can authenticate different types of objects:

$ vcn authenticate <file>

$ vcn authenticate dir://<directory>

$ vcn authenticate image://<imageId> (eg. vcn a image://open-liberty:latest)

$ vcn authenticate docker://<imageId> (deprecated, please use image)

$ vcn authenticate podman://<imageId>

$ vcn authenticate git://<path_to_git_repo>

$ vcn authenticate --hash <hash>

Authenticate assets based on a signerID:

$ vcn authenticate --signerID identityname image://hello-world

More information on notarization with SBOM is in the SBOM chapter.