ArchivioMD Verifier

Verifies cryptographic integrity of ArchivioMD posts — checks signatures, content hashes, and external anchors.

ArchivioMD Verifier — Cryptographic Content Integrity for the Web In an era of AI-generated misinformation, silent content edits, and eroding trust in online publishing, readers deserve a way to know that the article they're reading today says exactly what the author published — and that it hasn't been quietly altered since. ArchivioMD Verifier is a browser extension that works alongside the ArchivioMD WordPress plugin to give you independent, cryptographic proof of content integrity — automatically, on every page you visit. ─────────────────────────────────────────── WHY TRUST MATTERS ONLINE ─────────────────────────────────────────── Digital content is easy to edit and impossible to authenticate by eye. A news article, a research post, a legal document — any of these can be silently modified after publication with no visible trace. Traditional "last updated" timestamps are controlled by the publisher and tell you nothing about what changed or whether the change was disclosed. Cryptographic verification changes that. When a publisher uses ArchivioMD to sign and timestamp their content, a mathematical fingerprint of that content is locked in place at the moment of publication. Any change — even a single character — produces a completely different fingerprint, and the mismatch becomes instantly detectable. ArchivioMD Verifier brings that verification directly to your browser. ─────────────────────────────────────────── WHAT IS PGP / CRYPTOGRAPHIC VERIFICATION? ─────────────────────────────────────────── When you verify a document cryptographically, you're not trusting what the publisher says — you're checking the math. Here's how it works in plain terms: 1. The publisher hashes the content. A hash is a fixed-length "fingerprint" derived from the article's text using an algorithm like SHA-256 or BLAKE3. Change one word, and the fingerprint changes completely. 2. The publisher signs the hash. Using a private cryptographic key (Ed25519, ECDSA, or post-quantum SLH-DSA), the publisher produces a digital signature — a piece of data that only they could have created with their specific private key. 3. The signature is anchored externally. For an additional layer of trust, the signature can be recorded in an immutable public transparency log (Sigstore's Rekor) or timestamped with a certified RFC 3161 timestamp. These external anchors mean the publisher can't retroactively change when the content was signed. 4. You verify independently. When you visit a page, this extension fetches the hash, signature, and anchoring data from the site — then checks all of it against publicly available keys and logs. No one's word is required. The math either checks out or it doesn't. ArchivioMD supports Ed25519 (fast and battle-tested), ECDSA P-256 (X.509 certificate-based), and SLH-DSA (a FIPS 205 post-quantum algorithm — resistant to future quantum computing attacks). Sites may use one or several of these in combination. ─────────────────────────────────────────── WHAT THE EXTENSION DOES ─────────────────────────────────────────── ArchivioMD Verifier runs silently in the background. When you load a page, it checks whether the site uses the ArchivioMD WordPress plugin and, if so, immediately verifies the page's content integrity. TOOLBAR BADGE The extension icon in your Chrome toolbar shows your verification status at a glance: ✓ Green — Content hash and/or signatures verified. The page content matches what was published. ◐ Yellow — ArchivioMD detected, partial data available (e.g. JSON-LD proof or plugin presence found, but full verification data not yet accessible). ✗ Red — Verification failed. A hash mismatch or invalid signature was detected. — Grey — No ArchivioMD data found on this page. POPUP DETAILS Click the toolbar icon to see a full breakdown: • Content hash status (SHA-256, SHA-512, BLAKE3, and more) • Signature verification results (Ed25519, ECDSA, SLH-DSA) • External anchor details — Rekor transparency log entries with timestamps and direct links to Sigstore, RFC 3161 timestamp availability • DOM change detection — the extension tracks a fingerprint of the page's visible text locally. If the content changes between your visits, you'll see a clear warning even before re-verification completes. • Active feature grid — see at a glance which ArchivioMD features the site has enabled (hashing, signatures, Rekor, RFC 3161, JSON-LD, DANE, canary tokens) • Visit history — a local log of your past verifications for each site origin FULL LIVE VERIFICATION Right-click any page or link and select "Verify with ArchivioMD" to trigger a full live check — fetching fresh data directly from the site's REST endpoint and displaying a complete step-by-step report. CANARY TOKEN DECODER ArchivioMD can embed invisible steganographic "canary tokens" into article text using zero-width Unicode characters. If you suspect a copy of an article has been selectively leaked or redistributed, select text from the copy, right-click, and choose "Check for ArchivioMD canary token." The extension will decode the hidden payload — including the post ID, publication timestamp, and a payload version — directly in a popup. (MAC integrity verification requires the site's secret key and is server-side only.) FOUR-TIER DETECTION The extension is designed to work with sites at any level of ArchivioMD configuration: Tier 1 — REST API: Full verification data via /wp-json/archiviomd/v1/verify (richest data) Tier 2 — JSON-LD: W3C Data Integrity proof block embedded in the page head Tier 3 — DOM badge: ArchivioMD verification badge element detected in the page Tier 4 — .well-known probes: Plugin presence detected via published public keys and status endpoints ─────────────────────────────────────────── HOW TO USE IT ─────────────────────────────────────────── 1. Install the extension. It begins working immediately — no account, no sign-in, no configuration needed. 2. Browse normally. When you visit a site running the ArchivioMD WordPress plugin, the toolbar icon will automatically update with the verification result. 3. Click the icon for details. The popup shows the full breakdown of what was checked and what the result was. 4. Right-click for more. Use the context menu to run a full live verification on any page or linked URL, or to decode canary tokens from selected text. 5. Check your history. Click "History" in the popup to see a log of past verifications for the current site. The extension works for any website — news outlets, independent blogs, academic publications, legal archives, or any other platform using the ArchivioMD WordPress plugin. You don't need to know in advance whether a site uses it; the extension checks automatically. ─────────────────────────────────────────── PRIVACY ─────────────────────────────────────────── ArchivioMD Verifier does not collect, transmit, or sell any personal data. There are no analytics, no tracking pixels, no third-party data sharing. All verification requests go directly from your browser to the site you are currently visiting (to fetch verification data the site publicly provides) and, when you explicitly use the Rekor lookup feature, to the public Sigstore API (rekor.sigstore.dev). DOM fingerprints and visit history are stored locally in your browser using Chrome's storage API. They never leave your device. You can clear the history for any site at any time from within the popup. The extension requests broad host permissions (<all_urls>) because the ArchivioMD plugin can be installed on any website — it is not possible to know in advance which sites use it. The content script runs on page load and performs only passive detection unless you explicitly trigger a full verification. ─────────────────────────────────────────── ABOUT ARCHIVIOMD ─────────────────────────────────────────── ArchivioMD is a free, open WordPress plugin that gives publishers the tools to cryptographically sign, hash, and timestamp their content at the moment of publication — creating a verifiable record of what was said and when. It is developed and maintained by Mountain View Provisions. Plugin and documentation: https://mountainviewprovisions.com/ArchivioMD