AeroVault

Military-grade encrypted vault format for single-file encrypted containers.

AeroVault v2 combines AES-256-GCM-SIV (nonce misuse-resistant), Argon2id (128 MiB), AES-256-KW key wrapping, and optional ChaCha20-Poly1305 cascade encryption into a portable .aerovault file format.

Cryptographic Stack

Installation

From source

cargo install --path aerovault-cli

From crates.io

cargo add aerovault

CLI Usage

# Create a new vault
aerovault create my-vault.aerovault

# Create with cascade encryption (AES-GCM-SIV + ChaCha20-Poly1305)
aerovault create my-vault.aerovault --cascade

# Add files
aerovault add my-vault.aerovault file1.pdf file2.jpg

# Add files to a directory
aerovault add my-vault.aerovault document.pdf --dir docs/reports

# List contents
aerovault list my-vault.aerovault -H

# Extract a specific file
aerovault extract my-vault.aerovault -e document.pdf -o /tmp/output/

# Extract all
aerovault extract my-vault.aerovault -o /tmp/output/

# Create directories
aerovault mkdir my-vault.aerovault docs/reports

# Delete an entry
aerovault rm my-vault.aerovault document.pdf

# Rename an entry in place
aerovault rename my-vault.aerovault docs/report.txt report-final.txt

# Move or rename across directories
aerovault move my-vault.aerovault docs/report-final.txt archive/reports/report-final.txt

# Copy file or directory to another path
aerovault copy my-vault.aerovault archive/reports/report-final.txt backup/report-final.txt

# Show security info
aerovault info my-vault.aerovault

# Change password
aerovault passwd my-vault.aerovault

# Check if file is an AeroVault
aerovault check suspicious-file.bin

Library Usage

use aerovault::{Vault, CreateOptions, EncryptionMode};

// Create a new vault
let opts = CreateOptions::new("secure.aerovault", "strong-password")
    .with_mode(EncryptionMode::Cascade);
let vault = Vault::create(opts)?;

// Add files
vault.add_files(&["secret.pdf", "keys.txt"])?;

// Open and list
let vault = Vault::open("secure.aerovault", "strong-password")?;
for entry in vault.list()? {
    println!("{} ({} bytes)", entry.name, entry.size);
}

// Extract
vault.extract("secret.pdf", "/tmp/")?;

// Rename in place (same parent directory)
vault.rename_entry("keys.txt", "keys-2026.txt")?;

// Move (works for files and directories)
vault.move_entry("secret.pdf", "archive/secret.pdf")?;

// Copy (works for files and directories)
vault.copy_entry("archive/secret.pdf", "backup/secret.pdf")?;

Format Specification

See docs/AEROVAULT-V2-SPEC.md for the complete binary format specification.

vs Cryptomator

Security

• All key material is zeroized after use
• Constant-time MAC comparison prevents timing attacks
• File-id-bound chunk AAD (current format) prevents chunk splicing and reordering
• Extraction opens outputs with O_NOFOLLOW + create_new to refuse symlink redirection
• Per-chunk lengths are bounds-checked before allocation
• Atomic writes prevent corruption on crash
• 128 MiB Argon2id makes GPU brute-force impractical

License

GPL-3.0 -- See LICENSE for details.

Origin

AeroVault v2 was originally developed as the encryption engine for AeroFTP, a professional FTP/SFTP/cloud client. This standalone crate makes the format available for any Rust project.

Acknowledgements

From the v3 format work onward, the AeroVault wrapper-stack pipeline model (the packing / chunking / chunk-id / compression / crypt / cipher-hash taxonomy) is a design contribution by Ehud Kirsh (E. Kirsh), AeroFTP issue #162, 2026. Ehud has also provided sustained community testing of AeroVault across releases. The wrapper-stack format itself is implemented in the AeroFTP application; this crate provides the stable v2 / current-format library it builds on.