The disclosure provides an approach for authenticating the contents of a control message sent between data centers. The data centers are located in a computing system comprising multiple data centers. The computing system has a controller, and each data center has a local controller. The message contents comprise a tree of data objects. The tree is converted to a hash tree, and the root hash of the hash tree is stored on a distributed blockchain. Storage on the distributed blockchain ensures that the root hash is not tampered with by an attacker. The receiver of the message then authenticates that the hash tree has not been modified by comparing various hash values, as described herein.