C.E.R.T.O.
C.E.R.T.O.
Freeze digital
evidence before
it disappears.
C.E.R.T.O. certifies web pages, files, email, chats and cloud content autonomously, without intermediaries, in bundles anyone can verify.
Do-it-yourself forensic capture: you turn online content into a dated, verifiable bundle that even the opposing party can re-check. Without calling in an expert.
C.E.R.T.O. acquires and seals digital content through eleven modules. Every acquisition produces a BagIt bundle signed with Ed25519, with RFC 3161 timestamps and a qualified eIDAS seal, a CASE/UCO description, a forensic report and 5-year archiving.
How the content is captured changes from module to module, but from there every exhibit follows the exact same documented path — fingerprint, signature, timestamp, description and verification — without a single bit being altered.
Forensic collection of the content and its origin metadata, using each module's specific method.
Computation of MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256 and SHA-512 hashes that uniquely identify each file.
BagIt 1.0 bundle signed with an Ed25519 key bound to the device identity.
Internal RFC 3161 timestamps from public authorities and, from 3.3.3, a qualified eIDAS InfoCert outer seal, included.
CASE/UCO and offline verification by anyone; secure archiving for five years.
Anyone can dispute a screenshot: "you edited it", "that's not the real date". A C.E.R.T.O. bundle can't be. Together with the evidence you hand over a digital fingerprint (a code that changes if even a single bit is touched, so tampering becomes obvious) and a certified timestamp (the official, non-falsifiable date of the acquisition).
And the decisive point: the opposing party can run the verification itself, offline and without trusting you. The bundle is checked with open, standard tools (BagIt, CASE/UCO — the internationally recognized formats for digital exhibits). If the file is authentic, verification confirms it; if someone tampered with it, it shows. There's no arguing with data like that.
Collecting online evidence with C.E.R.T.O. is easy and secure, because:
Professionals across sectors use C.E.R.T.O. to acquire legally valid digital evidence.
Practical, jargon-free guides on how digital evidence is collected and what it actually shows.
Screenshot, notary, expert or software: four ways, what each one proves and how to do it in practice.
Read ScreenshotsWhat a picture of the screen shows, what it lacks, and how to fix that.
Read ChatsWhy exporting the chat is not enough, and what it takes to acquire it properly.
Read ToolsTen questions to ask before choosing, and what the vendors declare.
ReadOn its own, no: it is an easily edited image with no certified date and no technical context, and the opposing party can challenge it without much effort. C.E.R.T.O. instead produces a BagIt bundle signed with an Ed25519 key, with a double RFC 3161 timestamp and the content's hash fingerprint: if even a single bit is altered, tampering becomes demonstrable.
No. C.E.R.T.O. is designed to be used independently by lawyers, companies and private individuals: the acquisition follows a documented forensic procedure with no need for a technical consultant. An expert remains useful when the opposing party challenges the technical merits of the evidence.
By acquiring it into a WACZ archive (a container of WARC files, the ISO 28500 standard), which freezes the page, the navigation video, the screenshots and the HTTP traffic. Even if the original content is removed or changed, the bundle stays intact and can be verified by anyone.
You buy packs of slots, and each acquisition uses a fixed number of them depending on its type, never based on size, number of messages or duration: 1 slot for a single item (a file, an image, a screenshot, a screen recording), 2 for a session (a website, a mailbox, an FTP server, a cloud, a WhatsApp or Telegram chat). The qualified eIDAS InfoCert seal is included in every bundle. Prices range from €6 per slot (pack of 5) down to €3 per slot (pack of 1,000), VAT excluded. There is no subscription and slots never expire.
Yes, and that is the whole point. Every bundle includes the tools for independent verification: the judge or the opposing expert can recompute the hashes and check the signature and timestamps on their own, without C.E.R.T.O. Recomputing the hashes works offline too; the signature and timestamps need OpenSSL 3, which the script fetches by itself if it is missing.
Every bundle carries three RFC 3161 timestamps. The two internal ones — on the acquired content and on the report — are issued by public time-stamping authorities. The seal that closes the bundle is, from version 3.3.3, a qualified eIDAS InfoCert timestamp, included: for a qualified timestamp the eIDAS regulation presumes the date and time accurate and the stamped data intact. If InfoCert does not respond, a public authority applies the seal and the bundle declares it. Prices apply from C.E.R.T.O. 3.3.3; earlier versions apply the previous price list: update the program.
Yes. The WhatsApp module captures conversations, media and metadata with a session recording and a cryptographic seal, so the captured content is tied to a precise moment and cannot be altered. An equivalent module exists for Telegram (channels, groups and chats).
Nothing: the bundle is self-contained and remains valid even if the original disappears — which is precisely why you acquire it. Bundles transmitted to the server are also kept for 5 years with public verification, at no cost beyond the slot (except Deep Web acquisitions and web bundles over 500 MB: see the pricing page).
BagIt 1.0 (RFC 8493) with a CASE/UCO description, MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256 and SHA-512 hashes, an Ed25519 signature and a double RFC 3161 timestamp. These are open standards: the bundle can be opened and verified with third-party tools, without depending on us.
Eleven acquisition modules: web pages, remote files, email and certified mail, images, screen captures, screen recording with audio, FTP/SFTP, cloud (Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive), WhatsApp, Telegram and Deep Web (Tor). Every module produces the same kind of signed and time-stamped bundle.
C.E.R.T.O. is the desktop app and acquires content that lives online (web pages, email, chats, cloud). LOCUS is the mobile app and captures what happens in front of you (photos, video and audio with location and a certified date). Slots are shared: the same account uses them on both.
Yes. The Email module connects to the mailbox over IMAP and preserves the full EML source, checking DKIM, SPF and DMARC and analysing the delivery hops: this documents not only the message content but also where it really came from.
On Windows (x64) and macOS (Apple Silicon). Downloads are reserved for registered users and registration is free: your client area contains the packages for both platforms and the API key that activates the app on first launch.
ISO/IEC 27037 for handling digital evidence, BagIt 1.0 (RFC 8493) for the bundle, RFC 3161 for the timestamp, Ed25519 (RFC 8032) for the signature, CASE/UCO for describing the exhibit and WACZ/ISO 28500 for web archives. These are open, documented standards, not proprietary formats.
Every bundle contains the verify.sh and verify.bat scripts and an interactive dashboard: they recompute the hashes of every file, check the Ed25519 signature and the two RFC 3161 timestamps and state whether the bundle is valid. The timestamp authorities' certificates are included in the bundle: with OpenSSL 3 on the computer, verification needs no network; if it is missing, on a Mac the script downloads a verification kit once.
The computer's clock is not trusted. During the acquisition C.E.R.T.O. queries three independent NTP servers and records their consensus (median and deviation), and the bundle's date is in any case set by an RFC 3161 timestamp issued by a third-party authority: neither the person acquiring nor we can alter it.
The report includes a tool attestation block: the MD5, SHA-256 and SHA-512 hashes of the application binary that performed the acquisition, and the versions of the components used. The block is sealed together with the rest, so it verifiably documents what the evidence was produced with.
The acquisition still succeeds: C.E.R.T.O. recognises the protection system, clears the challenge using a real browser and — crucially — states so in the report. The fact that the content sat behind an anti-bot protection is documented, not hidden.
Yes. For Microsoft 365 and Outlook the connection uses OAuth2, so you authorise access without handing over your password. For other providers an app password is used. In both cases the messages are preserved in their full EML source.
Yes. The acquisition register and your slot balance are synchronised on the server and tied to the account, not to a single machine: you can install the app on another computer and find everything there.
It depends on the module, but always: the acquired content, the hash inventory of every file, the forensic report in PDF, an interactive dashboard to explore the exhibit, the acquisition log, the CASE/UCO description, the timestamps and the verification scripts. For the web there are also the replayable WACZ archive, the screenshots, the session video, the HTTP traffic and the TLS certificates.
Download the app and acquire your first digital evidence in minutes. No subscription, no expiry — you only pay for the slots you use.