🎓 Authenticity Validator for Academia

A smart, secure Fake Degree / Certificate Recognition System
Built end-to-end (design → frontend → backend) in TypeScript + React by Swarnendu Majumder
Submission: Smart India Hackathon 2025

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🔎 Project Summary

This project detects and prevents fake academic certificates by combining OCR, AI heuristics, and cryptographic verification.
Supports: scanned PDFs/images (legacy certificates) and digitally-issued certificates (with embedded hashes / QR / blockchain anchor).

Key capabilities:

• OCR extraction (name, roll no., marks, cert id)
• Pattern and metadata anomaly detection (tampered grades, cloned photos, forged seals)
• Database matching (institution records) — bulk or real-time ingestion
• Optional blockchain anchoring & QR/hash verification
• Admin dashboard, alerts, blacklisting, audit logs

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📖 Folder/Files Explanation

Path	Description
app/api/auth/	Authentication endpoints (signup, signin, OTP, etc.)
app/api/employee/	Employee-related APIs (approve users, pending users)
app/api/admin/	Admin-related APIs
app/dashboard/	Role-based dashboards (student, employer, institution, government, admin)
app/signup, signin, verify-otp	User-facing authentication pages
components/	Reusable React components
components/ui/	UI primitives (button, card, input, etc.)
lib/db.ts	Database connection
lib/models/	Mongoose models (User, PendingUser, OTP, Employee)
lib/email.ts	Email utilities
lib/cloudinary.ts	Cloudinary integration for uploads
public/	Static assets (images, icons, etc.)
.env.local	Local environment variables
next.config.js	Next.js configuration
package.json	Dependencies and scripts
tsconfig.json	TypeScript configuration

🛠 Tech Stack

• Frontend: React (TypeScript), React Router, Tailwind CSS (or Chakra)
• Backend: Node.js + TypeScript, Express
• DB: MongoDB (Primary) — PostgreSQL optional for relational cert metadata
• OCR: Tesseract.js (edge) / hosted Tesseract service or AWS Textract (plug-in)
• AI / ML: Lightweight model / heuristics for anomaly detection (Python microservice or node bindings)
• Blockchain (optional): Ethereum / Polygon for anchoring certificate hashes
• Storage: AWS S3 / Cloudinary for uploaded files
• Queue / Workers: BullMQ / Redis for async OCR & validation jobs
• Auth: JWT + Role-based access (Employer / Institution / Admin)
• Deployment: Vercel (frontend) + Heroku / AWS ECS / VMs (backend)

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🚀 Quickstart (Development)

Prerequisites

• Node.js >= 18
• npm / pnpm / yarn
• MongoDB instance (local or cloud)
• Redis (for job queue)
• (Optional) AWS credentials if using S3

Clone & Install

git clone https://github.com/Swarnendu1234/authenticity-validator.git
cd authenticity-validator-academia

How to start the Project

npm install
npm run dev

⚙️ Environment (example .env)

CLOUDINARY_CLOUD_NAME=
CLOUDINARY_API_KEY=
CLOUDINARY_API_SECRET=
MONGODB_URI=
EMAIL_USER=
EMAIL_PASS=
EMAIL_HOST=You can choose anything(e.g. smtp.gmail.com)
EMAIL_PORT=You can choose anything(e.g. 587)
JWT_SECRET=
NEXT_PUBLIC_BASE_URL=

Verification Pipeline:

• Upload: "File stored in secure object storage"
• Queue: "Async job created for OCR & validation"
• OCR: "Extract text & fields using Tesseract/AI"
• Preprocess: ["Normalize fonts", "Detect photo/seals", "Enhance image"]
• Heuristics_ML: ["Template/layout check", "Signature analysis", "DB match", "Duplicate detection"]
• Crypto_Check: "Validate hash/QR via blockchain or DB anchor"
• Report: "Generate result with confidence & highlights"
• Admin: ["Approve/Reject", "Blacklist offenders", "Notify stakeholders"]

🏫 Institution Integration

• Bulk Upload: CSV / JSON import support for onboarding legacy data
• Real-time API: /api/v1/institutions/:id/certs with mutual authentication
• ERP Adapters: Export connectors for popular ERP systems

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🔒 Privacy & Security

• Transport: TLS enforced across all services
• Encryption: Field-level PII encryption for sensitive data
• Access Control: Role-based access (Admin, Institution, Employer, Auditor)
• Auditability: Complete logs for all actions & events
• Compliance: GDPR & India IT Act aligned

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📊 Admin Dashboard

Key Features

• Live activity feed for real-time monitoring
• Powerful search (student / certificate / institution)
• Blacklist & Whitelist management
• Download evidence packages
• Export reports (CSV / PDF)
• Alerts via Email, SMS, or Webhook integrations

📸 Demo Screenshots

Here are some demo screenshots of the project:

🛠️ Contribution

Note: Sole author for this hackathon submission. Open-source contributions are welcome after the event.

Workflow for Contributors

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch
3. Submit a PR with proper tests & documentation

Contribution Guidelines

• Keep commits atomic & descriptive
• Always enable TypeScript strict mode
• Use ESLint + Prettier for consistent code style

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📜 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.
See the LICENSE file for details.

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👤 Author

Swarnendu Majumder
📧 swarnendumajumdert2007@gmail.com

💡 Full website (design → frontend → backend) built by the author.
🚀 Submitted as part of Smart India Hackathon 2025.