keeper

keeper

Keeper is a cryptographic secret store for Go. It encrypts arbitrary byte payloads at rest using Argon2id key derivation and XChaCha20-Poly1305 (default) authenticated encryption, and stores them in an embedded bbolt database.

It ships as three things you can use independently:

• A Go library — embed a hardened secret store directly in your process, with four security levels, per-bucket DEK isolation, and a tamper-evident audit chain.
• An HTTP handler (x/keephandler) — mount keeper endpoints on any net/http mux in one call, with pluggable hooks, guards, and response encoders for access control and audit logging.
• A CLI (cmd/keeper) — a terminal interface with a persistent REPL session, no-echo secret entry, and zero shell-history exposure.

Keeper was designed as the foundational secret management layer for the Agbero load balancer but has no dependency on Agbero and works in any Go project.

Contents

• Security model
• Cryptographic design
• Key hierarchy
• Storage schema
• Audit chain
• Jack integration
• x/keepcmd — reusable CLI operations
• x/keephandler — HTTP handler
• API reference
• Error catalogue
• Security decisions
• Dependencies

Security model

Keeper partitions secrets into buckets. Every bucket has an immutable BucketSecurityPolicy that governs how its Data Encryption Key (DEK) is protected. Four levels are available.

The URI scheme (vault://, certs://, space://, or any name you register) is independent of the security level. A scheme is just a namespace prefix that groups related buckets. The security level is a property of the BucketSecurityPolicy set at CreateBucket time and cannot be changed afterwards. You can mix security levels freely within the same scheme.

LevelPasswordOnly

The bucket DEK is derived from the master key using HKDF-SHA256 with a domain-separated info string per bucket (keeper-bucket-dek-v1:scheme:namespace). All LevelPasswordOnly buckets are unlocked automatically when UnlockDatabase is called with the correct master passphrase. No per-bucket credential is required at runtime. This level is appropriate for secrets the process needs at startup without human interaction.

LevelAdminWrapped

The bucket has a randomly generated 32-byte DEK unique to that bucket. The DEK is never stored in plaintext. For each authorised admin a Key Encryption Key (KEK) is derived from HKDF(masterKey‖adminCred, dekSalt) and used to wrap the DEK via XChaCha20-Poly1305. The bucket is inaccessible until an admin calls UnlockBucket with their credential. The master passphrase alone cannot decrypt the bucket. Revoking one admin does not affect any other admin's wrapped copy.

LevelHSM

The bucket DEK is generated at CreateBucket time and immediately wrapped by a caller-supplied HSMProvider. The provider performs the wrap and unwrap operations — keeper never handles the raw DEK after handing it to the provider. UnlockDatabase automatically calls the provider to unwrap and seed the Envelope for all registered HSM buckets. Master key rotation does not re-encrypt these buckets; the DEK is provider-controlled.

A built-in SoftHSM implementation backed by a memguard-protected wrapping key is available in pkg/hsm for testing and CI environments. Do not use it in production.

LevelRemote

Identical to LevelHSM in key management behaviour, but the HSMProvider is implemented by pkg/remote.Provider — a configurable HTTPS adapter that delegates wrap and unwrap to any remote KMS service over TLS. Pre-built configurations for HashiCorp Vault Transit, AWS KMS, and GCP Cloud KMS are provided in pkg/remote. For production use, configure TLSClientCert and TLSClientKey to enable mutual TLS authentication.

Cryptographic design

Master key derivation

salt ← random 32 bytes, generated once, stored as a versioned SaltStore (unencrypted)
masterKey ← Argon2id(passphrase, salt, t=3, m=64 MiB, p=4) → 32 bytes

A verification hash is stored on first derivation:

verifyHash ← Argon2id(masterKey, "verification", t=1, m=64 MiB, p=4) → 32 bytes

Subsequent DeriveMaster calls recompute this hash and compare it with crypto/subtle.ConstantTimeCompare. A mismatch returns ErrInvalidPassphrase.

The KDF salt is stored unencrypted by design. It must be readable before UnlockDatabase to derive the master key — encrypting it with a key derived from the master would be circular. A KDF salt is not a secret; its purpose is uniqueness, not confidentiality.

Secret encryption

Each plaintext value is encrypted with XChaCha20-Poly1305 using the bucket DEK:

nonce ← random 24 bytes
ciphertext ← XChaCha20-Poly1305.Seal(nonce, DEK, plaintext)

The stored record is a msgpack-encoded Secret struct containing the ciphertext, encrypted metadata, and schema version. Authentication is implicit: a ciphertext decrypted with the wrong key produces an AEAD authentication failure before any plaintext is returned.

KEK derivation — LevelAdminWrapped

salt ← random 32 bytes, generated at bucket creation, stored in policy
ikm ← masterKey ‖ adminCredential
KEK ← HKDF-SHA256(ikm, salt, info="keeper-kek-v1") → 32 bytes
wrappedDEK ← XChaCha20-Poly1305.Seal(nonce, KEK, DEK)

The KEK is derived using HKDF rather than a second Argon2 pass. The master key was already produced by a high-cost KDF; a second Argon2 invocation would add hundreds of milliseconds of latency to every UnlockBucket call with no security benefit. HKDF-SHA256 operates in approximately one microsecond.

The neither-alone property holds: an attacker who compromises only the database obtains the wrapped DEK and the HKDF salt but cannot derive the KEK without the master key. An attacker who compromises only the master key cannot unwrap any LevelAdminWrapped DEK without also knowing the admin credential.

Metadata encryption — secrets

Secret metadata (creation time, update time, access count, version) is encrypted separately from the ciphertext:

metaKey ← HKDF-SHA256(bucketDEK, nil, info="keeper-metadata-v1") → 32 bytes
encryptedMeta ← XChaCha20-Poly1305.Seal(nonce, metaKey, msgpack(metadata))

For LevelAdminWrapped, LevelHSM, and LevelRemote buckets this means metadata is inaccessible without the bucket credential, preventing an attacker with read access to the database file from learning access patterns or timestamps.

Metadata encryption — policies, WAL, and audit

All structural metadata is also encrypted at rest. Two keys are derived from the master key at UnlockDatabase time:

policyEncKey ← HKDF-SHA256(masterKey, nil, info="keeper-policy-enc-v1") → 32 bytes
auditEncKey  ← HKDF-SHA256(masterKey, nil, info="keeper-audit-enc-v1")  → 32 bytes

policyEncKey encrypts: BucketSecurityPolicy values and the rotation WAL.

auditEncKey encrypts: the Scheme, Namespace, and Details fields of every audit event.

Both keys are cleared from memory at Lock(). The cipher used for metadata encryption is the same configurable crypt.Cipher interface used for secrets — the user's cipher choice (AES-256-GCM for FIPS, XChaCha20-Poly1305 by default) flows through automatically.

Wire format for all encrypted metadata blobs:

nonce (cipher.NonceSize() bytes) || AEAD-ciphertext

Policy bucket key hashing

On-disk policy keys are opaque hashes rather than plaintext scheme:namespace strings, preventing offline enumeration of bucket names:

base ← hex(SHA-256("scheme:namespace"))[:32]   // 32 hex chars = 128-bit key space
_policies/<base>          → encrypted BucketSecurityPolicy
_policies/<base>__hash__  → SHA-256(encrypted policy bytes)
_policies/<base>__hmac__  → HMAC-SHA256(policyKey, encrypted policy bytes)

The in-memory schemeRegistry continues to use "scheme:namespace" as its key — only the on-disk representation changes.

Policy authentication

Each policy record carries two integrity tags written atomically in one bbolt transaction:

hash ← SHA-256(encryptedPolicyBytes)                         — unauthenticated, pre-unlock integrity
policyKey ← HKDF-SHA256(masterKey, nil, info="keeper-policy-hmac-v1") → 32 bytes
hmac ← HMAC-SHA256(policyKey, encryptedPolicyBytes)          — authenticated, post-unlock integrity

Before UnlockDatabase, only the SHA-256 hash is available. After unlock, loadPolicy verifies the HMAC tag. UnlockDatabase calls upgradePolicyHMACs to backfill HMAC tags on policies created before this feature existed.

Audit HMAC signing

auditKey ← HKDF-SHA256(masterKey, nil, info="keeper-audit-hmac-v1") → 32 bytes
HMAC ← HMAC-SHA256(auditKey, event fields including Seq)

The signing key is activated at UnlockDatabase and cleared at Lock. When the master key is rotated, Rotate appends a key-rotation checkpoint event to every active audit chain, signed with the old audit key as the final event of the old epoch. History is never rewritten; the checkpoint is the trust bridge between epochs.

Key hierarchy

passphrase
    │
    └─ Argon2id(salt) ──→ masterKey (32 bytes, memguard Enclave)
                              │
                              ├─ HKDF("keeper-audit-hmac-v1")  ──→ auditKey    (HMAC signing)
                              ├─ HKDF("keeper-audit-enc-v1")   ──→ auditEncKey (audit field encryption)
                              ├─ HKDF("keeper-policy-hmac-v1") ──→ policyKey   (policy HMAC)
                              ├─ HKDF("keeper-policy-enc-v1")  ──→ policyEncKey (policy/WAL encryption)
                              │
                              ├─ [LevelPasswordOnly]
                              │       └─ HKDF("keeper-bucket-dek-v1:scheme:ns") ──→ DEK
                              │               └─ HKDF("keeper-metadata-v1") ──→ metaKey
                              │
                              ├─ [LevelAdminWrapped]
                              │       ├─ random 32 bytes ──→ DEK
                              │       │       └─ HKDF("keeper-metadata-v1") ──→ metaKey
                              │       │
                              │       └─ HKDF("keeper-kek-v1", masterKey‖adminCred, dekSalt)
                              │                 └─ KEK
                              │                       └─ XChaCha20-Poly1305(KEK, DEK) ──→ wrappedDEK
                              │
                              └─ [LevelHSM / LevelRemote]
                                      ├─ random 32 bytes ──→ DEK
                                      │       └─ HKDF("keeper-metadata-v1") ──→ metaKey
                                      │
                                      └─ HSMProvider.WrapDEK(DEK) ──→ wrappedDEK
                                         (stored; provider controls the wrapping key)

All intermediate keys are zeroed immediately after use. The master key is never written to disk in any form.

Storage schema

The underlying database is bbolt. All buckets and their contents:

Secret struct (msgpack)

type Secret struct {
    Ciphertext    []byte `msgpack:"ct"`
    EncryptedMeta []byte `msgpack:"em,omitempty"`
    SchemaVersion int    `msgpack:"sv"`  // always 1
}

Audit Event fields

The Event struct uses separate plaintext routing fields (Scheme, Namespace) alongside encrypted payload fields (EncScheme, EncNamespace, EncDetails). Checksums are computed over the plaintext routing fields and the encrypted EncDetails bytes, so chain integrity can be verified at three tiers without any key:

Versioned salt store

The KDF salt is stored as a msgpack-encoded SaltStore under the salt metadata key. Each salt rotation appends a new SaltEntry and advances CurrentVersion. Old entries are retained as an audit trail. The SaltStore is stored unencrypted — see Security decisions.

Crash-safe rotation WAL

Rotate writes a WAL before touching any record. The WAL carries WrappedOldKey: the pre-rotation master key encrypted with the new master key. After a crash the old passphrase is gone; WrappedOldKey is the only correct way to carry the old key across the boundary. At UnlockDatabase, when a WAL is present, the new master key decrypts WrappedOldKey and rotation resumes from the WAL cursor. The WAL itself is encrypted with policyEncKey.

Audit chain

Every significant operation appends a tamper-evident event to the bucket's audit chain. Chain integrity depends on two mechanisms.

Checksum. SHA-256 over prevChecksum, ID, BucketID, Scheme, Namespace, EncDetails, EventType, and Timestamp. Using Scheme/Namespace as plaintext (always preserved alongside the encrypted forms) ensures the checksum is stable across load paths. EncDetails provides integrity over the encrypted payload.

HMAC. HMAC-SHA256 over all fields including Seq. An attacker who can write to the database but does not know the audit key cannot produce a valid HMAC. VerifyIntegrity checks both layers for every event.

Key rotation epoch boundary. At Rotate, a checkpoint event is appended to every active chain carrying fingerprints of both the outgoing and incoming audit keys. The checkpoint is signed with the outgoing key. Auditors holding any epoch key can recover subsequent epoch keys from the wrapped_new_key field and verify HMAC continuity across the full chain.

Automatic pruning. When AuditPruneInterval is set in Config, a jack.Scheduler runs periodically and calls PruneEvents on every registered bucket. LevelHSM and LevelRemote buckets are never pruned regardless of this setting.

Jack integration

Jack is an optional process supervision library. When a JackConfig is provided via WithJack, keeper activates background components automatically: auto-lock Looper, per-bucket DEK Reaper, health monitoring patients (bbolt read latency + encrypt/decrypt round-trip), audit prune scheduler, and async event Pool. Keeper never calls pool.Shutdown — the pool lifecycle belongs to the caller.

x/keepcmd

x/keepcmd provides reusable keeper operations decoupled from any CLI framework. Embed it in your own application to get typed, testable secret management without pulling in the CLI binary.

import "github.com/agberohq/keeper/x/keepcmd"

cmds := &keepcmd.Commands{
    Store: func() (*keeper.Keeper, error) {
        return security.KeeperOpen(cfg)  // your own config
    },
    Out:     keepcmd.PlainOutput{},
    NoClose: false, // true in REPL / session contexts
}

cmds.List()                                          // all keys: scheme://namespace/key
cmds.List("vault")                                   // all keys in scheme vault
cmds.List("vault", "system")                         // all keys in vault://system
cmds.Get("vault://system/jwt_secret")
cmds.Set("vault://system/jwt_secret", "newsecret", keepcmd.SetOptions{})
cmds.Rotate(newPassphraseBytes)    // caller resolved the passphrase — no prompter dependency
cmds.RotateSalt(currentPassBytes)  // same

keepcmd never calls prompter or reads from stdin. Passphrase resolution is entirely the caller's responsibility — this keeps the package safe in headless server contexts.

NoClose: true prevents Commands from calling store.Close() after each operation. Use this in REPL / session contexts where one store is shared across many calls.

x/keephandler

x/keephandler mounts keeper HTTP endpoints on any net/http mux. No external router dependency — it uses Go 1.22+ method+pattern routing with stdlib http.ServeMux.

import "github.com/agberohq/keeper/x/keephandler"

keephandler.Mount(mux, store,
    keephandler.WithPrefix("/api/keeper"),
    keephandler.WithGuard(func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request, route string) bool {
        if !acl.Allow(r.Header.Get("X-Principal"), route) {
            http.Error(w, `{"error":"forbidden"}`, http.StatusForbidden)
            return false
        }
        return true
    }),
    keephandler.WithHooks(
        keephandler.Hook{
            Route:       keephandler.RouteGet,
            CaptureBody: false,
            After: func(r *http.Request, status int, _ []byte) {
                audit.Log(r.Context(), route, status)
            },
        },
    ),
    keephandler.WithEncoder(func(w http.ResponseWriter, route string, status int, data any) {
        w.Header().Set("Content-Type", "application/json")
        w.WriteHeader(status)
        json.NewEncoder(w).Encode(map[string]any{
            "ok":    status < 400,
            "route": route,
            "data":  data,
        })
    }),
    keephandler.WithRoutes(func(m *http.ServeMux) {
        m.HandleFunc("POST /api/keeper/totp/{user}", myTOTPHandler)
    }),
)

Endpoints

Hook contract

BeforeFunc returns (allow bool, err error).

• (true, nil) — let the request proceed.
• (false, nil) — abort; the hook has already written a complete response.
• (false, err) — abort; the framework writes a 500 using err.Error(). The hook must not have written anything to w.

Hook.CaptureBody bool controls whether AfterFunc receives the response body. false (default) costs one lightweight statusWriter wrapper; true buffers the full body into a bytes.Buffer for the AfterFunc — one allocation per request.

API reference

Construction and unlock

store, err := keeper.New(keeper.Config{
    DBPath:              "/var/lib/agbero/keeper.db",
    AutoLockInterval:    30 * time.Minute,
    EnableAudit:         true,
    AuditPruneInterval:  24 * time.Hour,
    AuditPruneKeepLastN: 10_000,
    AuditPruneOlderThan: 90 * 24 * time.Hour,
    DBLatencyThreshold:  200 * time.Millisecond,
    Logger:              logger,
}, keeper.WithJack(keeper.JackConfig{
    Pool:     jackPool,
    Shutdown: jackShutdown,
}))
defer store.Close()

// Shorthand (wraps DeriveMaster + UnlockDatabase):
if err := store.Unlock([]byte(os.Getenv("KEEPER_PASSPHRASE"))); err != nil {
    log.Fatal(err) // ErrInvalidPassphrase on wrong passphrase
}

UnlockDatabase performs the following in order:

1. Derives and activates the audit HMAC signing key
2. Derives and activates the policy HMAC key
3. Derives and activates policyEncKey and auditEncKey
4. Clears and reloads schemeRegistry (decrypts all policy blobs)
5. Resumes any interrupted rotation WAL
6. Upgrades policy HMAC tags
7. Seeds all LevelPasswordOnly bucket DEKs into the Envelope
8. Starts background tasks (migration looper, auto-lock, health patients)

LevelPasswordOnly bucket — full lifecycle

err := store.CreateBucket("vault", "system", keeper.LevelPasswordOnly, "init")

store.Set("vault://system/jwt_secret", []byte("supersecret"))
val, err := store.Get("vault://system/jwt_secret")

// Namespaced convenience wrappers
store.SetNamespaced("admin", "jwt_secret", secretBytes)
val, err = store.GetNamespaced("admin", "jwt_secret")

LevelAdminWrapped bucket — full lifecycle

err := store.CreateBucket("finance", "payroll", keeper.LevelAdminWrapped, "ops-team")
err = store.AddAdminToPolicy("finance", "payroll", "alice", []byte("alicepass"))

store.SetNamespacedFull("finance", "payroll", "salary_key", []byte("AES256..."))

store.LockBucket("finance", "payroll")
err = store.UnlockBucket("finance", "payroll", "bob", []byte("bobpass"))
// ErrAuthFailed — does not distinguish wrong password from unknown admin (CWE-204)

err = store.RevokeAdmin("finance", "payroll", "alice")
err = store.RotateAdminWrappedDEK("finance", "payroll", "bob", []byte("bobpass"))

needs, err := store.NeedsAdminRekey("finance", "payroll")

LevelHSM / LevelRemote buckets

import (
    "github.com/agberohq/keeper/pkg/hsm"
    "github.com/agberohq/keeper/pkg/remote"
)

// SoftHSM — testing only
provider, _ := hsm.NewSoftHSM()
store.RegisterHSMProvider("secure", "keys", provider)
store.CreateBucket("secure", "keys", keeper.LevelHSM, "ops")

// Vault Transit
cfg := remote.VaultTransit("https://vault.corp:8200", vaultToken, "my-key")
cfg.TLSClientCert = "/etc/keeper/client.crt"
cfg.TLSClientKey  = "/etc/keeper/client.key"
provider, _ = remote.New(cfg)
store.RegisterHSMProvider("tenant", "secrets", provider)
store.CreateBucket("tenant", "secrets", keeper.LevelRemote, "ops")

Audit key export

// Export the audit encryption key to allow a third-party auditor to decrypt
// event details without access to the master passphrase.
auditKey, err := store.ExportAuditKey()
defer zero.Bytes(auditKey)

events, err := auditStore.LoadChain("vault", "system", auditKey)

Key rotation

// Rotate passphrase — crash-safe WAL, resumes on next Unlock if interrupted
store.Rotate([]byte("new-passphrase"))

// Rotate KDF salt — re-derives master key, re-encrypts LevelPasswordOnly
store.RotateSalt([]byte("current-passphrase"))

Compare-and-swap

err := store.CompareAndSwapNamespacedFull("vault", "system", "counter",
    []byte("old"), []byte("new"))
// ErrCASConflict if current value does not match old

Backup

f, _ := os.Create("keeper.db.bak")
info, err := store.Backup(f)
// info.Bytes, info.Timestamp, info.DBPath

Error catalogue

Security decisions

ErrAuthFailed unifies all UnlockBucket failures (CWE-204 / CVSS 5.3). Both an unknown admin ID and a wrong password return ErrAuthFailed. This prevents admin ID enumeration by timing or error-string comparison. RevokeAdmin retains ErrAdminNotFound because it is an administrative operation on an already-unlocked store.

Argon2id dominates timing. Argon2id takes 200–500 ms on typical hardware. Post-derivation comparison differences are four or more orders of magnitude smaller and are not measurable remotely. No artificial equalisation is applied.

DEK retrieved inside the CAS transaction boundary. CompareAndSwapNamespacedFull retrieves the bucket DEK inside the bbolt write transaction, eliminating the window where a concurrent Rotate could change the DEK between retrieval and use.

Passphrase never stored as a Go string in the HTTP handler. All three passphrase fields (passphrase, new_passphrase) are decoded from JSON directly into []byte via raw-map extraction, keeping the string backing array off the long-lived heap. The []byte copy is zeroed with wipeBytes after use.

No --passphrase flag in the CLI. Flags appear in ps output and shell history. The CLI accepts the passphrase only from KEEPER_PASSPHRASE env or an interactive no-echo prompt.

REPL secret values are never visible. set <key> in the REPL without an inline value uses term.ReadPassword — it does not appear in terminal scrollback, shell history, or ps. An inline value (set key value) can be supplied for non-sensitive data when convenient.

SaltStore is intentionally unencrypted. The KDF salt must be readable before UnlockDatabase to derive the master key. policyEncKey (used for all other metadata encryption) is itself derived from the master key — encrypting the salt with policyEncKey would be circular. A KDF salt provides uniqueness, not confidentiality; there is no security value in encrypting it.

Policy bucket keys are hashed, not plaintext. On-disk policy keys are hex(SHA-256("scheme:namespace"))[:32] — 128 bits of key space — rather than readable strings. An offline attacker reading the bbolt file cannot enumerate bucket names without decrypting the policy blobs.

Metadata encryption uses the same cipher interface as secrets. All policyEncKey and auditEncKey operations go through s.config.NewCipher(key) — the same crypt.Cipher interface configured for secret values. The user's cipher choice (AES-256-GCM for FIPS 140, XChaCha20-Poly1305 by default) flows through to policy, WAL, and audit encryption automatically. No code path hard-codes a specific algorithm.

LevelHSM and LevelRemote buckets skipped during master key rotation. reencryptAllWithKey and RotateSalt explicitly skip these buckets. The DEK is provider-controlled; master salt rotation does not affect it.

Crash-safe rotation with WrappedOldKey. Rotate writes a WAL before touching any record. The WAL carries WrappedOldKey: the pre-rotation master key encrypted with the new master key. After a crash, UnlockDatabase decrypts WrappedOldKey using the verified new key and resumes rotation from the cursor.

Dependencies