Security

How your vault is actually protected

Your master password never encrypts your data directly. One random 256-bit vault key is generated once, and that single key encrypts everything you ever store — your password's only job is to unlock ("unwrap") that one key. Five independent unlock methods — master password, recovery phrase, hardware key, M-of-N, and family password — each wrap their own copy of that same vault key, so none of them is a weaker copy of your data.

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Licenses issued

Devices protected

Hidden profile works differently on purpose: it isn't a 6th way into this same data — it's a second, wholly separate vault with its own independent encryption, indistinguishable from the primary one at the unlock screen.

Component	What it does	Technology
Data cipher	Encrypts the vault key and all of your actual data. An "authenticated" cipher — it detects tampering, not just scrambles data.	XChaCha20-Poly1305 (AEAD), via libsodium
Password → key	Turns your typed password into an encryption key. Deliberately slow and memory-hungry, so brute-forcing your password is impractical even with stolen hardware.	Argon2id — 128 MiB memory, 3 passes
Key combination	Merges two or more independent secrets (e.g. password + hardware key) into one wrapping key, with domain separation so combinations can never collide.	BLAKE2b generic hash

No shortcut password check. There is no separate, faster "is this the right password" test anywhere in the app. Unlocking is the decryption attempt — a wrong password and a corrupted file are deliberately indistinguishable until a full decrypt is attempted. This closes off an entire class of attack where a fast, cheap check could test thousands of guesses without ever running the slow, expensive real one.

Built on, not built alone

Standard, audited primitives — not custom cryptography

None of Argon2id, XChaCha20-Poly1305, or BLAKE2b were invented for Vaultherit. All three are long-established, publicly scrutinized primitives, not something written from scratch and hoped to be correct. Argon2id won the Password Hashing Competition specifically for this job. XChaCha20-Poly1305 and BLAKE2b are implemented via libsodium, one of the most widely used and independently audited cryptography libraries in the industry. Rolling your own cryptography is one of the most common ways security products fail — Vaultherit deliberately composes existing, vetted building blocks instead.

Said plainly, both directions

What this protects against — and what it can't

✓ What it protects against

A lost or stolen device — the vault file is encrypted at rest; without a valid unlock method, it's unreadable.
A breach of your own sync/backup destination — only ever-encrypted bytes are written there, never plaintext.
A tampered or corrupted vault file — the AEAD cipher detects tampering and refuses to open, rather than returning silently-altered data.
Large-scale offline guessing — Argon2id's memory-hardness makes brute-forcing expensive per attempt, even with stolen hardware.

✗ What it can't protect against

Malware already running on your device while the vault is unlocked — true of any local application, not specific to Vaultherit.
A weak or reused master password — Argon2id slows down guessing; it can't turn a weak password into a strong one.
Someone who obtains both your password and your recovery phrase — any one valid unlock method grants full access, so each needs to be guarded as carefully as the vault itself.
Direct coercion to unlock the real vault — the hidden profile exists to make a second vault indistinguishable from the primary one, but that's mitigation, not immunity.

Where your data actually lives

Local-first by architecture, not by setting

By default, nothing about your vault leaves your device — not to a Vaultherit server, not anywhere. Unlocking, browsing, and editing all happen entirely offline. Multi-device sync and cloud backup are opt-in, and even then, only ever-encrypted bytes are written to a destination you choose yourself, not a server Vaultherit operates. There is no "trust us" step here — there's simply no plaintext leaving the device to begin with.

Independent audit status, stated plainly. Vaultherit has not yet completed a formal third-party security audit or penetration test. Everything on this page is our own architecture, published in enough technical detail to be checked against — not asserted without specifics. If an established, independently audited track record matters most to you today, that's a legitimate reason to prefer one of the larger products on our own comparison page instead.

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