Credential Crusher

Content Credentials are the consumer-facing name for C2PA, an open technical standard from the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity for attaching signed provenance to media. A credential is a manifest of assertions — which device or tool produced the asset, when, what edits were applied, which earlier assets went in as ingredients — bound to the exact bytes of the asset with cryptographic hashes and signed with a certificate.

Despite this exhibit's name, nothing here is anti-credential. When a credential validates, the math vouches for a chain of custody, and that is genuinely useful. It just answers a narrower question than people want it to — and the everyday internet destroys credentials so routinely that their absence carries no information at all.

What a valid credential proves

The manifest was signed by the holder of the named certificate, and that certificate chains to a root the validator trusts. Provenance is only as strong as the trust list it is checked against.
The asset's bytes are the ones the signer sealed: the binding hashes still match, so the media has not been altered since signing.
The recorded history — capture details, edits, ingredient assets, and signing time — is what the signing hardware or software attested when it signed.

What it does not prove

That the depicted event is real. A staged scene, a photograph of a screen, or a fully synthetic image can each carry a valid credential that honestly describes its own production.
That any caption, claim, or headline attached to the asset is true. Credentials sign provenance, not narrative — false context is invisible to them.
That the signer is trustworthy. A valid signature on a false assertion is still a valid signature; trust attaches to who signed, not to the format.
That media without credentials is synthetic. Absence is the default condition of media online, for authentic and generated assets alike.

What a careful verifier checks

Asset binding: do the manifest's hashes still match these exact bytes?
Signer and trust chain: who signed, and does the certificate chain reach a trusted root?
Timestamp: when was it signed, and does a trusted timestamp back that up?
Revocation status: has the signing certificate been revoked since?
Digital source type: does the manifest itself declare a generated or composited origin?
Recorded ingredients and transformations: what history does the manifest admit to?

The crusher: everyday transformations

Action	Credential	Why
Screenshot	Stripped	A screenshot is a fresh image of your screen. Nothing from the original file — manifest included — comes along.
Re-encode or recompress in a non-C2PA-aware tool	Stripped	Recompression rewrites the bytes, so the binding hashes no longer match; typical pipelines discard the manifest, and a copied-over manifest fails validation anyway.
Crop in a non-C2PA-aware editor	Stripped	Same mechanics: new bytes, broken binding, and in most editors no manifest in the output at all.
Re-upload to a platform	Usually stripped	Most platforms re-encode uploads and strip metadata on ingest. Preservation and display are arriving in places, but stripping is still the safe assumption.
Edit in a C2PA-aware tool	Recorded as an ingredient	The prior manifest is embedded as an ingredient and a new signed manifest describes the edit — the history extends instead of breaking.
Rename or copy the file	Survives	The manifest lives inside the file, not in its name or location. A byte-identical copy keeps its credentials intact.

Some systems attempt to recover stripped credentials by fingerprint or watermark lookup. Treat recovery as a bonus, never a guarantee.

The rule this site is built on

Absence of credentials proves nothing. The everyday internet — screenshots, crops, recompression, platform ingest — crushes credentials by default, so most authentic media arrives bare. A valid credential proves custody of the bytes; a missing one proves only that the asset traveled the ordinary way.

Everything here follows the same discipline: what a signal proves, never what it merely suggests. How this site works.