Why Blackbook¶
Most tools make you opt in to safety: turn on encryption, enable two-factor, configure TLS, set permissions. It's easy to forget a step, and one forgotten step is often the whole breach.
Blackbook flips that around. The strongest option is simply the default. There's usually no "secure mode" to switch on, because there's no insecure mode to begin with. Out of the box, with zero configuration:
| You get this, automatically | In plain terms |
|---|---|
| Encrypted in transit (TLS 1.3) | Nobody on the network can read what you send or receive. There is no unencrypted way to connect. |
| Two credentials required for every request | Every command must prove itself with both a certificate and a token. A stolen token alone — or a copied certificate alone — is useless. |
| Encrypted at rest | Secrets and files are encrypted before they're written to disk. A stolen copy of the database is just noise. |
| Even the names are hidden | The database doesn't just hide your secret values — it also encrypts the names of your secrets, files, users, and groups. An attacker with full database access can't even tell what you're storing. |
| Read-only by default | Saving a secret a second time is refused, so you can't silently clobber something important. Overwriting is a deliberate, separate action. |
| Every action is logged, tamper-evidently | Each entry is cryptographically chained to the one before it, so nobody can quietly delete or edit history. |
| Your saved login is itself encrypted | The credentials stored on your machine are sealed under a passphrase. A stolen laptop folder is inert without it. |
| Abuse-resistant | A single client flooding the server gets throttled, so one bad actor can't take the service down for everyone. |
You can turn the dial up even further when a particular secret deserves it — require a fresh two-factor code on every read, demand approval from your teammates, make it self-destruct after one read, or encrypt it so that even the server operator can't read it. Those are covered later. But you never have to reach for them just to be safe. Safe is the floor.