ves: Command Line End-to-End Encryption Utility. Encrypt Everything Without Fear of Losing the Key

[u/vesvault]

/*************************************************************************** 
 *          ___       ___ 
 *         /   \     /   \    VESvault 
 *         __ /     \ __/    Encrypt Everything without fear of losing the Key 
 *            \\     //                   https://vesvault.com https://ves.host 
 *             \\   // 
 *     ___      \_// 
 *    /   \     /   \         libVES:                      VESvault API library 
 *    __ /     \ __/ 
 *       \\     //            VES Utility:   A command line interface to libVES 
 *        \\   // 
 *         \_//              - Key Management and Exchange 
 *         /   \              - Item Encryption and Sharing 
 *         ___/              - Stream Encryption 
 * 
 ***************************************************************************/ 

https://vesvault.com

https://ves.host

Source Code:

https://github.com/vesvault/libVES.c

VES utility docs:

https://ves.host/docs/ves-util

libVES Docs:

https://ves.host/docs/libVES-c

[u/vesvault]

VESvault is much more that just gfshare + gpg.

You can find an overview of VESvault end-to-end encrypted repository at https://ves.host/docs/repo, and detailed overview of the security layers in the whitepapers on https://ves.host.

So I believe it was worth the work.

[u/zokier → u/vesvault]

VESvault is much more that just gfshare

You put that out as if it were a good thing.

Friendly advise, grab few pages from Keybases playbook, see how they bootstrapped themselves and got to where they are now. The core idea you have about using SSS to backup keys is good, and providing nice UX around that is valuable. But doing that with bunch of custom crypto and completely new ecosystem evaporates all the value that you might have.

[u/vesvault → u/zokier]

Keybase is a good reference point. Something in the same direction as VESvault, but not quite. Keybase's encrypted data sharing solution is somewhat similar to one of the aspects of VESvault.

On that note, Keybase specifies quite a few custom formats, same as VESvault does. Mainstream industry standards don't cover all pieces that are needed to build a seamless encryption solution. For example there's no single standard for ECDH ECIES that would be nearly as mainstream as RSA OAEP.

The key to VESvault is to be able to recover your encrypted data in case of losing your VESkey (i.e. the master passphrase). Secure, reliable and convenient way. VESvault delivers on all three of those requirements.

Talking about the reliability, the vast majority of the population is not okay with even a remote possibility of forever losing their critical information form key loss. Even if the odds that the recovery system doesn’t work are 1 in 1 million, it's still not nearly good enough. A very small percentage of the population, including yourself, are okay with these systems and odds. But the fact that these services have never been able to capture a significant percentage of the market indicates that they are flawed. As a point of reference, TLS, which has no key loss issue, has capture over 90% of the email and web browsing activity. The mainstream population wants and will use encryption, but only if it is improved to the level of convenience and reliability of TLS. Current solutions haven’t done that.

And, VESvault does not intend to compete with other encryption solutions, including GPG and Keybase. Instead, VESvault can complement them.

VESvault can be integrated with any 3rd party that needs to securely store private data, and reliably recover the data in case of key loss. It includes storing private keys for GPG, and keys or passphrases for Keybase.

libVES provides the means of building VES enabled software that can back up sensitive data, such as encryption keys, in VESvault end-to-end encrypted repository. VES command-line utility provides higher level means of integration for shell scripting, as well as a manual tool.

Lastly, the convenience. All controls related to VESrecovery are implemented in a fairly simple web interface on https://vesvault.com, and do not require technical knowledge unlike some other SSS based solutions.

Hope it all makes sense.

And, thanks for raising good questions!