Aurora Vault · An encrypted vault for Windows
Aurora Vault encrypts your files with Windows' own cryptographic building blocks (CNG): contents and file names cannot be read while it is locked. We have no algorithm of our own and no back door; if you lose both your password and your recovery key, we cannot open the vault either. We say up front that malware can read a vault while it is open and that no independent cryptography review has been done yet.
Three promises
In an encrypted vault the most important thing is knowing what you are trusting and where that trust ends. Aurora Vault writes down both.
Every building block comes from Windows CNG: AES-256-GCM encryption and a PBKDF2-SHA256 password key (600,000 rounds). We do not invent our own algorithm.
If you lose your password and your recovery key together, the vault cannot be opened; there is no back door, on purpose. The recovery key is shown only once.
Every chunk is authenticated. A chunk that was changed, cut off or moved, or brought from another file or an older state, is caught when it is opened; no corrupt data is returned silently.
How it looks
You move between screens with the tabs at the top. The screens below are example views of the program's real interface, taken with test files; names and numbers are sample data.
What it can do
Features with a Beta badge were coded and tested in a test environment but have not yet been fully tried in real conditions. Features with a Coming soon badge are not in the program yet.
A vault is a folder named "Name.auroravault"; while it is locked you can back it up by copying it. File contents and names are encrypted; only random identifiers show on disk. A vault cannot be open in two places at once.
The password is turned into a key with PBKDF2-SHA256 over 600,000 rounds (Turkish characters are normalised). The recovery key is 160 random bits; it can be copied, printed or saved to a file and is shown only once, when it is created. Changing the password takes a few seconds and does not re-encrypt the files.
After wrong attempts the wait grows from 1, 2, 4… seconds up to 30 seconds. This delay only slows attempts made in this program; it has no effect if the vault folder is copied, so choose a long password. The vault is never deleted.
You drag and drop files and folders or add them with a button; the original stays where it is. Extracting never overwrites an existing file. "Check integrity" reads and verifies every file. Large files are streamed, not loaded into memory.
When you open a file it is decrypted into a temporary working folder that only your Windows account can reach and opened with its default program. When you save, it is encrypted back into the vault within 2 seconds; when the vault locks, the files in the working folder are overwritten with zeros and deleted. It has not yet been tried with a real program such as Word or Notepad.
Auto-lock can be 5, 15, 30 or 60 minutes or never. The vault locks when the screen locks, the user switches, a remote session disconnects, the computer sleeps and when you sign out. These events were tested with a decision table and simulated messages sent to the running program; a real Windows+L, sleep and sign-out have not been tried by hand.
Files are first written under a temporary name and flushed to disk, then renamed; the index is updated last. If the program dies in between, at worst the file added last is missing and the earlier ones are intact. Half-written files are cleaned up at start.
The interface is available in 21 languages; Arabic and Urdu are shown right to left. The translations passed automatic checks and a back-translation check; review by native speakers is still under way.
Asking for a time-based one-time code in addition to the password when opening the vault. It is not in the program yet; it is planned for version 0.2.0 and will need a licence.
Opening the vault on a computer without Aurora Vault installed, with a small opener kept on a USB stick. It is not in the program yet; it is planned for version 0.2.0 and will need a licence.
Deleting the unencrypted original of a file added to the vault with the Aurora Shredder method. It is not in the program yet (version 0.2.0, licence); for now the original stays where it is and you delete it yourself.
Measured, written down
On 11 October 2026 an acceptance run was done on a real computer with normal user rights (not administrator). The tests used only synthetic sample files; your real files and your real data folder were never touched.
| Tested | Result | How it was verified |
|---|---|---|
| Acceptance run (normal user rights) | 19 steps passed, 0 failed, 0 skipped | End to end with the command-line program: create, add, lock, open, extract, password and recovery |
| Build tests | User 50/50, Administrator 11/11, installer 61/61 | Test suites that run during the build |
| Known cryptographic test vectors | All passed | NIST GCM document Test Cases 13–16 for AES-256-GCM, RFC 7914 for PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA256 and RFC 5869 for HKDF; the vectors were also checked independently with Node.js |
| Tampering | All caught | A single bit (11 positions), swapping chunks, cutting off the last chunk, a chunk from another file or an older state, another vault's header, lowering the round count, putting an old index back |
| Name leakage in a locked vault | No file names, content markers or extensions found | The raw bytes of a locked vault were searched as UTF-8 and UTF-16; names on disk are random identifiers only |
| Killing the program while writing | Earlier files intact, no half-written files | The process was killed at 5 specific stages and at 6 random moments |
| Changing the password | Encrypted files stayed byte for byte identical | Test and an acceptance step: only the password wrapping is redone |
| Large file | A 2.2 GB synthetic file was added and decrypted, SHA-256 identical, memory growth under 200 MB | A sparse test file was streamed and verified without being written to disk |
| Panel security | Attempts from other sites and processes were rejected | Only 127.0.0.1, Host check, cookie, CSRF and Origin checks, no inline scripts |
| Mutation run | All 40 of 40 inserted faults were caught | Faults were deliberately put into the code to see whether the tests caught them |
| Interface, 21 languages | 214 screens measured: horizontal scrolling, overflowing text and script errors all 0 | Automatic measurement; the images were looked at by eye only in Arabic, Urdu, Tamil and German |
What we leave out on purpose
We leave out things that are common in encryption tools but either misleading or risky.
We cannot recover your password and we cannot open your vault for you. If the password and the recovery key are lost together, the contents do not come back. We do not loosen this for convenience.
Encryption uses Windows' own audited building blocks (CNG). Methods that do not come with Windows, such as Argon2id, are not there for now; they will be considered in 0.2.0.
Decrypting contents on the fly and showing them as a drive such as K: needs a kernel driver. Instead you open files from the window and we encrypt them back into the vault when you save.
Limits
Knowing what a vault cannot protect matters as much as knowing what it protects. We say these up front:
Aurora Vault protects a locked vault. It does not protect a vault while it is open or a computer that has malware on it, and it does not replace antivirus.
Free use and licence
The free edition has 1 vault, with no size limit and no weaker encryption. A licence opens unlimited vaults. Opening an existing vault, adding it, removing it from the list and changing its password are always free; if your licence ends, your existing vaults keep opening. Aurora Vault is not sold separately: it comes with the Aurora One Licence.
For everyone
Free
One vault, full-strength encryption.
All programs, one licence
Unlimited vaults. The same licence covers every Aurora One program.
Aurora One Licence This program is covered by the Aurora One Licence: one licence for every Aurora One program.
See pricingSystem requirements
FAQ
If you have your recovery key, you open the vault with it and set a new password in the same step. The recovery key is shown only once, when the vault is created; write it down somewhere safe.
If you lose both your password and your recovery key, the vault cannot be opened; we cannot open it either. We deliberately left out any back door.
Files are encrypted in 64 KiB chunks with AES-256-GCM. The key is derived from your password with PBKDF2-SHA256 (at least 600,000 rounds). All of it comes from Windows CNG; we have no algorithm of our own. The format and design are documented.
No, not yet. We wrote the design down and tested it with known test vectors and tampering tests, but no independent cryptography review has been done. For very sensitive data, decide with that in mind; we recommend an outside review before release.
No. Programs in the same Windows session can reach the files in an open vault; if the computer has malware, it can read an open vault and record your password from the keyboard. Lock the vault when you are done; the program locks it by itself on screen lock, sleep and sign-out.
They cannot see file names or contents. They can see the number of files, the approximate size of each file, the change times and the name of the vault folder. So do not give the folder a name that contains personal information.
Yes. While it is locked, copying the vault folder is enough; the copy is encrypted too. If you put the vault in a cloud sync folder, the encrypted files go to the cloud; the program warns about this when you create a new vault.
Yes. The free edition has 1 vault with the same encryption strength. Aurora Vault is not sold separately; unlimited vaults open with the Aurora One Licence, which covers every Aurora One program. Download and sales are not open yet.
Our other products
All of our products are designed for Windows and are local-first.
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