How Horcrux Works
Horcrux backs up your sensitive data — passwords, cryptographic keys, digital wills — by distributing encrypted keys to people you trust. No single person holds enough information to access your data, but together they can help you recover it.
Horcrux vaults require multiple keys to open — and you decide how many. Horcrux helps you create those keys and give one to each person you trust (your stewards).
Under the hood Horcrux uses an algorithm named Shamir's Secret Sharing
to split your vault data into encrypted "shares". A share is a
random-looking chunk of your data that is useless by itself, but it
can be combined with other shares to decrypt the entire vault. The
neat part of Shamir's Secret Sharing is that you can decide how many
shares to generate
For example, you could invite 5 friends as stewards of your vault but only require 3 of them to agree to open it. If one of them initiates a recovery session to open the vault, the other 4 stewards will be notified and can choose to approve or reject the request. If any 3 of them approve, the vault will be unlocked for the initiating steward and they can view or export the contents.
Horcrux uses the Nostr protocol to securely transfer the shares and metadata beteween you and your stewards. Instead of using traditional accounts with email and password Nostr gives you an account key that only you know and is never shared with the developers of Horcrux or anyone else. This key is used to encrypt all communication between you and your stewards and ensures that the developers of Horcrux and the servers that are used to transfer your share data cannot read your messages at all.
To communicate with your stewards Horcrux uses Nostr relay servers. By default your vaults will use the official Horcrux server, but you can configure them to use any relay server you wish, including one that you run yourself.
Horcrux is motivated by the principle that our data does not need to be owned and controlled by mega corporations whose highest value is profit and who we cannot hold accountable. Horcrux is fully open source and free to use and modify as you wish.
If you have further questions or feedback, send us a message below.