Research: LockRoot Zero-Trust Architecture

This document aggregates academic, technical, and industry research output derived from the development and threat modeling of the LockRoot local password manager.

Research Status

This project is currently being prepared for formal publication.

Potential future outputs include:

• Academic paper
• Whitepaper
• Conference presentation
• Reproducibility package

Future Work

1. Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) Migration Strategy: Investigating the viability of Kyber or hybrid ML-KEM structures for local vault encryption, although symmetric AES-256 is generally considered quantum-resistant against Grover’s algorithm.
2. Hardware-Backed Derivation Constraints: Exploring deep integration with Android StrongBox and iOS Secure Enclave for hardware-bound KDF constraints, further shifting trust from the OS kernel to the physical hardware module.
3. Cross-Platform File System Sandboxing: Developing more aggressive, dynamic file-system jail definitions for the Linux (AppImage) and macOS (App Sandbox) builds to defend the at-rest vault file from user-space malware.

References

1. RFC 9106 (Argon2): Argon2 Memory-Hard Function for Password Hashing and Proof-of-Work Applications.
2. NIST SP 800-38D: Recommendation for Block Cipher Modes of Operation: Galois/Counter Mode (GCM) and GMAC.
3. Apple Platform Security: Data Protection and Secure Enclave capabilities (.completeFileProtection).
4. Libsodium Documentation: Secure memory zeroing (sodium_memzero) and XChaCha20-Poly1305 construction.