🔐 SafePass - Modern & Secure Password Manager

SafePass is a lightweight and robust password manager developed in C++ using the Qt framework. It prioritizes maximum security through industry-standard key derivation and encryption algorithms.

✨ Features

Secure Vault: Local storage for your credentials (Username, Password, Website, URL).

Instant Search: Real-time filtering of entries by website name.

Password Generator: Create strong passwords with adjustable length (8 to 32 characters).

Visual Management: Toggle password visibility and quick-copy to clipboard.

Performance: Optimized memory footprint (~50 MB during operation).

🛡️ Security Architecture

The security of SafePass relies on modern cryptographic standards to ensure your data remains unreadable, even if the database file is compromised.

1. Authentication & Key Derivation (PBKDF2)

Instead of storing your Master Password, SafePass utilizes PBKDF2 (Password-Based Key Derivation Function 2):

Algorithm: HMAC-SHA256.

Iterations: 100,000 cycles to mitigate brute-force attacks.

Salt: A unique 128-bit (16 bytes) salt is randomly generated for every user using QRandomGenerator::securelySeeded().

2. Data Encryption (AES-256)

All sensitive information is encrypted before being written to the SQLite database:

Standard: AES-256 (Advanced Encryption Standard).

Mode: CBC (Cipher Block Chaining) with a random Initialization Vector (IV) for each entry.

Encryption Key: The AES key is directly derived from the PBKDF2 process, ensuring maximum entropy.

🛠️ Built With

Language: C++17

UI Framework: Qt 6 (Widgets)

Database: SQLite (via Qt SQL module)

Cryptography:

    Qt Network (for QPasswordDigestor)

    tiny-AES-c: External C library for AES implementation.

📜 Credits & Dependencies

This project uses the tiny-AES-c library for AES encryption management.

Original Repository: kokke/tiny-AES-c

License: The aes.c and aes.h files are included in compliance with their original open-source license.

⚠️ Known Limitations & Threat Model

This project is a cryptographic proof-of-concept developed for academic purposes. Current architectural areas identified for future hardening:

• AEAD Transition: Current cipher uses AES-256-CBC with PKCS#7; migration target is AES-256-GCM to prevent malleability and padding-oracle attacks.
• Memory Footprint: Plaintext credentials reside in Qt table models upon load; target is lazy-decryption on display/copy actions with memory zeroization.
• Clipboard Sanitization: Implement an automatic 30-second clipboard clearing timer.

🚀 Getting Started

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/your-username/SafePass.git

Open the project in Qt Creator.

Configure the project with a Qt Kit (Qt 6 recommended).

Build and run the application.