Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
Show HN: CryptexVault – Decentralized Password Manager (cryptex-vault.com)
11 points by Bl4cksmith 1041 days ago
Hi everyone! We started working on this project last year because a password manager that we used was being sold to another company and stopped offering their service. We were not happy with the alternatives that were available so we decided to give it a shot and build our own.

We are now at a point where we have a working Beta and are looking for some feedback from the community.

The main idea is to have data synchronization without a central server (single point of failure). When you create a Vault (inside which you can store your credentials and other sensitive data), you can "Link" it to other devices. By linking it to other devices, you can synchronize the data between them. - The Vault itself never leaves your device, it is encrypted and decrypted locally, and is only shared with the other devices that you link it to.

The data synchronization is done using WebRTC, meaning, the data is transferred directly between the devices without going through a central server. If the devices cannot connect directly, the data is transferred through a TURN server (which is a server that is used to relay the data between the devices). - We are working on a way to allow the users to use their own TURN server (or a TURN server that they trust) or perhaps not use one at all, instead of using the one that we provide.

Now, the only problem is how do your devices find each other - Using a signaling server. - We provide a signaling server that is used by default, but we're also working on a way to allow the users to use their own signaling server.

In order to allow for easier testing, I've allowed the users to link devices without having to upgrade their account.

I would appreciate any feedback you have for us, and if you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer them.

Bl4cksmith

3 comments

Good idea. No extension for browser to use Autofill visible on the website. No mobile clients visible. Unfortunately, that's a deal breaker as there is no reason for me to switch away from Bitwarden.
Hi, yes, I understand - there are no extension or mobile clients available yet. Wanted to see if people would actually be interested in this kind of product before committing to that kind of development. Thank you for the feedback!
Forgot to mention; the application itself https://www.cryptex-vault.com/app is a PWA - meaning, android (chrome, firefox) or iOS (Safari) will let you install it and use it as a standalone application.
If it's decentralized is the server side code open source and can it be self hosted and connected to the network?
Hi, the project is not open source yet. I'd like to decouple the application itself from the backend code that handles the Stripe integration, emails and other application irrelevant functionality first - then open source it and get more eyes on the code. Hypothetically, if the whole back-end was open source ATM - you could run it locally or somewhere like on Vercel - with no problems, you'd just need to set the ENV variables for things like Stripe and other services to an empty value.

I'd say that the most important part of the infrastructure is the signaling server (websocket server), and the STUN/TURN server used in WebRTC connection forming.

One interesting fact about the currently running application; the application itself is client-side rendered. If you would download the application bundle that you get when you open the application in your browser, you could use it if you would mock networking requests - this would basically simulate the way it works now when the PWA is offline. With the application being client-side rendered - every user gets the same code.

is this use web3 technology?
Not at the moment, keeping it simple for now. That being said, I'm very interested in IPFS and the capabilities that can be attained from implementing it. I am very open to ideas, though - feel free to suggest anything you think would be helpful or handy to have!