Fractum

Fractum is designed for organizations and individuals who need to securely long-term cold store critical information.

It provides enterprise-grade cold storage with mathematical guarantees, eliminating single points of failure through distributed secret sharing.

Split secrets (passwords, SSH keys, seed, etc.) into shares and reconstruct them later—securely, cross-platform, with minimal setup.

💼 High-Value Use Cases:

• Emergency recovery credentials: Admin passwords, break-glass access credentials
• Backup encryption master keys: Protect your backup infrastructure encryption keys
• Root CA private keys: Certificate authority and PKI infrastructure protection
• Password manager exports: LastPass, Bitwarden, KeePass backup files
• Cryptocurrency wallet protection: Seed phrases, private keys, hardware wallet backups
• Legal & financial documents: Wills, contracts, tax records, insurance papers

⚡️ Distributed Architecture Benefits:

• Bus Factor Protection: Write a Will and instructions for family members - they can pool shares to recover your assets
• Theft/Loss Protection: House fire, kidnapping/hostage situations, or lost hardware wallet - shares remain secure because you cannot be forced to access distant physical locations immediately
• Geographic distribution: Store shares across multiple locations (family, friends, safe deposit boxes)
• No single point of failure: Distributed trust across shares with threshold cryptography
• Zero-knowledge property: K-1 shares reveal absolutely nothing about your secrets

🛡️ Enterprise-grade Security:

• Works completely offline: perfect for air-gapped environments
• Shamir's Secret Sharing (SSS): Same algorithm used by Trezor (SLIP-39), Coinbase, Ledger Recover, and ICANN DNSSEC root key ceremonies
• AES-256-GCM: NSA Suite B approved, trusted by Signal, AWS, Google Cloud, and Apple for authenticated encryption
• Zero Novel Cryptography: Battle-tested primitives with decades of academic scrutiny and real-world deployment
• Fully offline: and portable CLI

Table of Contents

• The Docker way (recommended usage)
• How it works
• Security Architecture
• Complete Security Architecture Details
  • Setup
  • Usage
    • Encrypting a file
    • Decrypting a file
• Manual installation using venv
• Contributing
• License
• Complete Documentation
• Security Best Practices

The Docker way (recommended usage)

Fractum can run in a completely network-isolated Docker container. The primary benefit of this approach is that the --network=none flag provides users with confidence that the Fractum code cannot exfiltrate their secrets through any network connection. Additionally, this Docker setup can work inside a TEE using tools like Enclaver.io for even more advanced security scenarios.

📚 Complete Docker Usage Guide

Setup

1. Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/katvio/fractum.git

cd fractum && git checkout tags/v1.3.0

2. Create data folders

mkdir -p data

3. Build the Docker image

docker build -t fractum-secure .

4. Place the file to be encrypted in the data folder

mv /path/to/your/passwords-export.csv data/

This step is essential as the Docker container can only access files within the mounted data directory

Usage

Encrypting a file

docker run --rm -it \
  --network=none \
  -v "$(pwd)/data:/data" \
  -v "$(pwd)/shares:/app/shares" \
  fractum-secure encrypt /data/passwords-export.csv \
  --threshold 3 \
  --shares 5 \
  --label "bitwarden-backup" \
  -v

Expected output:

Using label: bitwarden-backup
Using existing shares directory
Generated share set ID: 708c547f308b39a9
Generated shares: 5
Encrypted file: /data/passwords-export.csv.enc
Created archive: /app/shares/share_1.zip
Created archive: /app/shares/share_2.zip
Created archive: /app/shares/share_3.zip
Created archive: /app/shares/share_4.zip
Created archive: /app/shares/share_5.zip

Decrypting a file

docker run --rm -it \
  --network=none \
  -v "$(pwd)/data:/data" \
  -v "$(pwd)/shares:/app/shares" \
  fractum-secure decrypt /data/passwords-export.csv.enc \
  --shares-dir /app/shares

> File successfully decrypted: /data/passwords-export.csv

For more detailed Docker usage instructions and security considerations, see our Docker Usage Guide.

How it works

Fractum transforms your sensitive files into distributed, encrypted shares using mathematically proven cryptographic techniques. Here's the technical process:

📚 Complete Documentation | 🔍 Security Architecture Details

Input and Output Files

Input:

• Your sensitive file (any type: documents, images, databases, etc.)
• Optional: Existing shares for key reuse

Output:

• Encrypted file with .enc extension
• Multiple self-contained share archives (ZIP files)
• Each share contains: share data, encrypted file, complete Fractum application, and bootstrap scripts

📚 Learn more: Encrypting Files Guide | Decrypting Files Guide | Security Best Practices

Security Architecture

Fractum's security architecture combines AES-256-GCM encryption with Shamir's Secret Sharing to provide information-theoretic security for long-term cold storage.

🔍 Complete Security Architecture Details

Core Security Features:

• AES-256-GCM: Authenticated encryption with 256-bit keys and unique nonces
• Threshold cryptography: Configurable K-of-N security model using finite field arithmetic
• Memory protection: Automatic clearing with secure deletion and swap prevention
• Air-gapped design: No network dependencies during cryptographic operations
• Multi-layer integrity: GCM authentication tags + SHA-256 hashing + metadata validation

Standards Compliance:

• ✅ FIPS 140-2 compatible algorithms
• ✅ NIST recommended key sizes
• ✅ Information-theoretic security guarantees

Contributing

If you want to contribute submit a GitHub pull request or open an issue. Thank you! Any contribution is better than no contribution :)

📚 Contributing Guide | 🔒 Security Best Practices

License

Fractum is licensed under a Custom Proprietary Software License that permits personal, non-commercial use. Commercial use is not permitted under this license.

📄 View Full License