Notary is an open-source project that aims to enhance the security of container image distribution and deployment by providing trust and integrity guarantees for container images. It allows publishers to sign their container images, enabling users to verify the authenticity and integrity of those images before running them.

• **Image Signing and Verification:** Notary provides tools for publishers to sign their container images using cryptographic signatures. Users can then verify these signatures to ensure that the image has not been tampered with and originates from a trusted source.
• **Trust Delegation:** Notary supports trust delegation, allowing you to establish trust relationships between different entities and create chains of trust for image verification.
• **Offline Signing:** Notary enables offline signing of images, which is useful in environments where direct access to the network or key management systems might be restricted.
• **Integration with Container Registries:** Notary can be integrated with container registries like Docker Hub and Harbor, providing a seamless way to manage and verify signed images.
• **Extensibility:** Notary's modular architecture allows for extensibility and customization, enabling integration with different signing and key management solutions.

• **Enhanced Security:** Notary helps prevent the execution of malicious or tampered container images, improving the security of your containerized environments.
• **Trust and Verification:** It establishes a chain of trust for container images, enabling users to verify their authenticity and integrity.
• **Protection against Supply Chain Attacks:** Notary helps mitigate the risk of supply chain attacks by ensuring that images used in your deployments are from trusted sources.
• **Offline Signing:** The ability to sign images offline provides flexibility in secure environments with limited network connectivity.

While Notary primarily operates through its command-line interface (CLI), here are a few illustrative examples:

1. **Initializing a Notary Repository:**

```bash notation cert generate-repository my-repository ```

This command initializes a new Notary repository named “my-repository” for storing signing keys and metadata.

2. **Signing an Image:**

```bash notation sign –key my-key my-org/my-image:latest ```

This command signs the `my-org/my-image:latest` image using the specified signing key.

3. **Verifying an Image:**

```bash notation verify my-org/my-image:latest ```

This command verifies the signature of the `my-org/my-image:latest` image, ensuring its authenticity and integrity.

• **Notary GitHub Repository:** s://github.com/notaryproject/notation(https://github.com/notaryproject/notation) (Note: The original Notary project has been archived, and `notation` is the successor project)
• **Notary v2 Documentation:** [invalid URL removed]