sv-vault 2.0.1

Distributed secret manager — AES-256-GCM + Argon2id + Shamir's Secret Sharing

SV01 Binary Format Specification

SecureVault Encrypted Blob Format — Version 1

Overview

SV01 is sv-vault's encrypted data storage format. Serializes AES-256-GCM authenticated-encrypted data into a single binary file. Designed so other implementations can achieve compatibility from this spec alone.

Binary Layout

Offset  Size    Type        Field           Description
──────  ────    ────        ─────           ───────────
0       4       bytes       magic           magic number "SV01" (0x53 0x56 0x30 0x31)
4       1       uint8       version         format version (currently 1)
5       32      bytes       salt            Argon2id KDF salt
37      12      bytes       nonce           AES-256-GCM nonce
49      2       uint16 BE   ctx_len         context string length
51      N       utf-8       context         encryption context (e.g. "master-key", "vault-export")
51+N    2       uint16 BE   ts_len          timestamp string length
53+N    M       utf-8       created_at      ISO 8601 timestamp
53+N+M  4       uint32 BE   cipher_len      ciphertext length
57+N+M  L       bytes       ciphertext      AES-256-GCM ciphertext + 16-byte auth tag

Total size

57 + ctx_len + ts_len + cipher_len bytes

Cryptographic Parameters

Key Derivation — Argon2id

Parameter	Value	Note
Algorithm	Argon2id	Hybrid (side-channel + GPU resistant)
Time cost	3	iterations
Memory cost	65536	64 MB
Parallelism	4	threads
Hash length	32	AES-256 key size
Salt	32 bytes	random, stored in blob

Password → argon2id(password, salt, t=3, m=64MB, p=4) → 32-byte key

In direct key mode (encrypt_with_key), KDF is skipped and salt is filled with zeros.

Encryption — AES-256-GCM

Parameter	Value	Note
Algorithm	AES-256-GCM	Authenticated Encryption
Key size	256 bits (32 bytes)
Nonce	96 bits (12 bytes)	random
Tag size	128 bits (16 bytes)	appended to ciphertext

GCM auth tag is automatically appended to the ciphertext (default behavior of the cryptography library).

AAD (Additional Authenticated Data)

Optional. When used, the same AAD must be passed during decryption. AAD is not stored in the blob — managed by the caller.

Shamir's Secret Sharing

Split master key (32 bytes) into N shares; K shares needed to recover.

Parameter	Value
Field	GF(2^8)
Irreducible polynomial	0x11D (x^8+x^4+x^3+x^2+1)
Generator	2 (primitive root, order 255)
Share index	1-based (x=1,2,...,N)
Per-byte	independent polynomial

Note: Different from AES's 0x11B. In 0x11B, order of 2 is 51, which is unsuitable for Shamir.

Share Format

Each share is an (index: int, data: bytes) pair. data length = original secret length (32 bytes for master key).

File Extensions

Extension	Content
.vault	SV01 encrypted blob (file/secret)
.bin	Shamir share (raw bytes)

Vault Directory Structure

~/.sv-vault/
├── vault.meta.json      # metadata (vault_id, shamir config, share map)
├── vault.data           # SV01 blob — secret DB encrypted with master key
├── vault.key.enc        # SV01 blob — master key encrypted with password
└── audit.jsonl          # audit log (append-only)

vault.meta.json Schema

{
  "vault_id": "26f0d008921c",
  "version": 2,
  "shamir_n": 5,
  "shamir_k": 3,
  "share_map": [
    {
      "share_index": 1,
      "node": "worker2",
      "remote_path": "/opt/sv-vault/shares/share_26f0d008921c_1.bin",
      "stored_at": "2026-03-14T08:00:00+00:00",
      "verified": true,
      "hash": "8bfd47a2878aa1b7"
    }
  ],
  "entry_count": 7,
  "backup_targets": ["storage1", "storage2"],
  "created_at": "2026-03-14T08:00:00+00:00",
  "last_modified": "2026-03-14T08:00:00+00:00"
}

Security Properties

1. Authenticated encryption — GCM provides confidentiality + integrity + authentication simultaneously. No CBC+HMAC needed.
2. Memory-hard KDF — Argon2id 64MB. Maximizes cost of GPU brute-force.
3. Information-theoretic security — Shamir SSS: k-1 shares reveal zero information about the secret.
4. Transport-agnostic — shares transferred via vssh (Wire/Tailscale/LAN agnostic). No SSH fallback.
5. Rule-based only — AI/LLM makes no security decisions. Password locations decided by humans.

Compatibility Notes

• Python 3.9+ required
• cryptography >= 41.0 (AES-GCM)
• argon2-cffi >= 23.1 (Argon2id)
• Big-endian (network byte order) for multi-byte integers
• UTF-8 for all strings
• No padding — GCM does not require padding