Mode de contrainte: Emergency Vault Destruction

Duress mode in Vaultaire lets you designate a vault as a coercion trigger. Drawing that vault's pattern opens it normally but simultaneously destroys the cryptographique salts for every other vault on the device, making their data permanently unrecoverable.

Qu'est-ce que le mode de contrainte ?

Le mode de contrainte est la dernière ligne de défense. C'est une fonctionnalité que tu espères ne jamais avoir besoin d'utiliser, conçue pour le moment où tout le reste a échoué — quand quelqu'un se tient devant toi, exige l'accès à tes fichiers privés, et que tu n'as pas d'autre choix que d'obtempérer.

Voici comment ça fonctionne : tu désignes un coffre-fort comme coffre-fort de contrainte. Tu le remplis de contenu crédible — quelques photos anodines, des documents banals. Tu lui attribues un schéma, comme n'importe quel autre coffre-fort. De l'extérieur, il est impossible à distinguer d'un coffre-fort normal.

La différence, c'est ce qui se passe quand tu traces ce schéma. Un schéma de coffre-fort normal déchiffre les fichiers de ce coffre-fort, et rien d'autre. Le schéma de contrainte fait ça aussi — il ouvre le coffre-fort de contrainte, affichant son contenu à l'écran. Mais simultanément, silencieusement, en arrière-plan, il déclenche la destruction cryptographique de tous les autres coffres-forts de ton appareil.

Aucune boîte de dialogue de confirmation n'apparaît. Aucun son d'avertissement. Aucune icône de chargement ne suggère que quelque chose d'inhabituel se passe. La personne qui te regarde voit un coffre-fort s'ouvrir. Elle voit des photos. Elle voit exactement ce qu'elle s'attendait à voir. Ce qu'elle ne voit pas, c'est que toutes les autres données chiffrées de ton appareil viennent de devenir définitivement irrécupérables.

Comment ça fonctionne sous le capot

Understanding the mechanics matters, because the security of Mode de contrainte depends on its implementation being genuinely destructive — not just cosmetically hidden.

Step 1: You Draw the Duress Pattern

When you draw le schéma assigned to your coffre-fort de contrainte, Vaultaire recognizes it as a duress trigger. The app begins two operations simultaneously: it starts decrypting and displaying the coffre-fort de contrainte's contents (the decoy), and it initiates the destruction sequence for every other vault.

Step 2: Encryption Keys Are Wiped

Each vault in Vaultaire is encrypted with its own unique key, derived from its own unique pattern. Those keys are not stored in plaintext — they are regenerated from le schéma each time. But each vault also stores a salt and métadonnées needed for the dérivation de clés process. Mode de contrainte ne fait pas just delete the fichiers chiffrés. It destroys the cryptographique salt and dérivation de clés parameters for every non-coffre-fort de contrainte.

Without the salt, even drawing the correct pattern ne peut pas regenerate the key. The mathematical link between ton schéma and the clé de chiffrement is severed permanently.

Step 3: Encrypted Data Becomes Noise

The fichiers chiffrés themselves may still exist on disk momentarily, but they are now indistinguishable from données aléatoires. Without the correct clé de déchiffrement — which can no longer be derived because the salt is gone — the contents are mathematically unrecoverable. No forensique tool, no government agency, no amount of computing power can reconstruct the original data.

Step 4: The Duress Vault Opens Normally

While all of this is happening, the coffre-fort de contrainte opens on screen exactly the way any vault would. The person coercing you sees photos loading, files appearing, a normal-looking vault experience. Tvoici no visual evidence that anything else occurred. The entire destruction sequence completes in the background, typically in under a second.

Pourquoi personne ne peut savoir

The entire point of Mode de contrainte is that it is invisible. If an attacker could detect the destruction, they could stop it, reverse it, or punish you for triggering it. Vaultaire is designed so that no observable difference exists between opening a coffre-fort de contrainte and opening a regular vault.

Pas de boîte de dialogue de confirmation

Most destructive actions in software come with a warning: "Are you sure?" Mode de contrainte has no such warning. A confirmation dialog would be a dead giveaway. The moment you draw le schéma, the action is taken. You ne peut pas accidentally trigger it unless you accidentally draw a specific, complex pattern on a 5×5 grid — which is not something that happens by chance.

Pas de différence de timing

The coffre-fort de contrainte opens at the same speed as any other vault. The destruction of other vaults' keys happens asynchronously, in parallel with the decryption of the coffre-fort de contrainte's contents. An observer with a stopwatch would notice no delay.

Aucune preuve résiduelle

After Mode de contrainte triggers, the app shows no record of the event. Tvoici no log entry, no "vaults deleted" notification, no change in the app's interface. The next time the app opens, it behaves as though the coffre-fort de contrainte is the only vault that has ever existed. Because, functionally, it is.

Ce qui est détruit

Precision matters here. Mode de contrainte ne fait pas perform a theatrical deletion where files are moved to a trash folder. It performs a cryptographique wipe that makes recovery physically impossible.

The Cryptographique Salt

Every vault has a unique, randomly generated salt used during dérivation de clés. The salt is the critical ingredient that connects your drawn pattern to a specific clé de chiffrement. When Mode de contrainte destroys the salt, it severs that connection permanently. Even if you remember every other vault's pattern, the dérivation de clés function will produce a different — wrong — key without the original salt.

Paramètres de dérivation de clés

Beyond the salt, each vault stores parameters needed for dérivation de clés: iteration counts, algorithm identifiers, and vecteur d'initialisations. All of these are wiped. Without them, reconstruction of the clé de chiffrement is not merely difficult — it is mathematically undefined.

The Encrypted Data

The blob chiffrés on disk become orphaned. They are sequences of bytes that, without the correct key, are indistinguishable from data generated by a random number generator. Forensique analysis of the disk will find données chiffrées with no corresponding key material, no salt, and no métadonnées. It looks exactly like disk sectors that were once used and then freed — which is exactly what it is.

Quand utiliser le mode de contrainte

Mode de contrainte is designed for situations where you face physical coercion or legal compulsion and have decided that data destruction is preferable to data exposure. C'est a personal decision with serious implications, and Vaultaire gives you the tool without making the decision for you.

Passages aux frontières

In many countries, border agents can legally demand that you unlock ton appareil and hand it over for inspection. If you refuse, you may be detained, denied entry, or have ton appareil confiscated. Drawing the schéma de contrainte before handing over ton téléphone ensures tvoici nothing to find — just one vault with some holiday photos.

Contrainte physique

If someone is forcing you to unlock ton téléphone under threat, you need a way to comply without actually giving them what they want. Mode de contrainte lets you draw un schéma that looks like cooperation. The coercer sees a vault open. They do not see the simultaneous destruction of everything else.

Saisie de l'appareil

If you have reason to believe ton appareil will be confiscated — whether by a government, an employer, or anyone else — you can trigger Mode de contrainte proactively. By the time the device reaches a forensique analyst, tvoici nothing left to analyze.

Protection des journalistes et des sources

Journalists working in hostile environments, activists operating under surveillance, and anyone whose data could endanger themselves or others. Mode de contrainte turns a moment of vulnerability into a moment of protection.

Configurer ton coffre-fort de contrainte

Configuring Mode de contrainte takes about two minutes. Doing it well — making it convincing — takes a bit more thought.

Désigne le coffre-fort

In Vaultaire's settings, you designate one vault as the coffre-fort de contrainte. This vault will be the one that opens when the schéma de contrainte is drawn, so it needs to contain content that looks real and satisfies an observer's expectations. An empty vault is suspicious. A vault with clearly fake content is suspicious. A vault with a handful of normal-looking personal photos is perfect.

Remplis-le de contenu crédible

Put content in your coffre-fort de contrainte that someone would expect to find in a private vault: a few personal photos, maybe a scan of a document, some files that look private enough to justify locking but innocuous enough to survive scrutiny. The goal is not to fool a forensique investigation — it is to satisfy the person standing in front of you in the moment.

Choisis un schéma naturel

The schéma de contrainte should be something you can draw under stress, quickly, without hesitation. If you fumble or draw it wrong, you will open the wrong vault or no vault at all. Practice it until it is muscle memory. C'est not the time for a complex 12-dot pattern. Something simple and fast is better — 5 to 7 dots, a shape your hand can trace without thinking.

Teste-le

Before you ever need it, test Mode de contrainte in a safe environment. Create some test vaults, designate a coffre-fort de contrainte, and trigger it. Verify that the other vaults are gone. Verify that the coffre-fort de contrainte opened normally. Then set it up for real.

Pas d'annulation possible

This needs to be said clearly: once Mode de contrainte triggers, the destruction is permanent. Tvoici no recovery. Tvoici no "Oops, I drew the wrong pattern" safety net. Tvoici no backup key stored on a server somewhere. Tvoici no way for Vaultaire support to restore tes données.

The clé de chiffrements are gone. The salts are gone. The data is bruit aléatoire. C'est the point. If the destruction were reversible, it would not be destruction — it would be hiding. And hiding is something a sufficiently motivated adversary can undo.

Mode de contrainte is designed for people who understand this trade-off and have decided, in advance, that they would rather lose their data permanently than let someone else access it. If you are not certain you would make that trade, do not enable Mode de contrainte. If you are certain, it is the most powerful protection Vaultaire offers.

The irreversibility is not a flaw. It is the entire point. A destructive action that can be undone is not destructive — it is theatrical. Mode de contrainte is not theater. It is a guarantee.