Security & Compliance

ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA, and EU AI Act compliance. Zero-knowledge architecture with AES-256-GCM encryption.

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Threat Model

The following table describes what anonym.plus protects against and what is outside the scope of its security guarantees.

Threat	Mitigation	Status
Documents sent to external servers	All processing runs locally via bundled Presidio + spaCy. No network calls for PII detection or anonymization.	Mitigated
Vault data accessed by attacker with disk access	Vault encrypted with AES-256-GCM. Key derived from user password via Argon2id (64 MB memory, 3 iterations). Without PIN or recovery phrase, data is unreadable.	Mitigated
Server compromise exposes user passwords	Zero-knowledge authentication. Passwords are hashed client-side before any server communication. Server stores only cryptographic proofs.	Mitigated
Encryption keys extracted from memory	Key material is zeroed from memory when the vault locks. Auto-lock triggers after 15 minutes of inactivity.	Mitigated
Man-in-the-middle on API communication	All API communication over HTTPS/TLS. Certificate pinning not implemented (standard browser/Tauri TLS).	Partially mitigated
Malware on user's device	Outside scope. If an attacker has code execution on your machine, no desktop app can guarantee security. Use OS-level protections.	Out of scope
NLP detection misses PII entities	Presidio + spaCy use both NER (machine learning) and regex patterns. Configurable confidence thresholds and manual review step. False negatives are possible — always review results.	Partially mitigated

Encryption Architecture

Vault Encryption

All local data (processing history, encryption keys, settings) is stored in an encrypted vault.

Algorithm: AES-256-GCM (authenticated encryption with associated data)
Key Derivation: Argon2id with 64 MB memory cost, 3 iterations, 32-byte output
Recovery Phrase: 24-word BIP39 mnemonic (256 bits of entropy), generated during first setup
Quick Unlock: Optional 4-8 digit PIN for convenience. After 3 failed attempts, recovery phrase required.
Auto-lock: Vault locks after 15 minutes of inactivity (no mouse, keyboard, or scroll events)
Key Zeroing: Encryption key material is zeroed from memory when the vault locks

Document Encryption (Reversible Anonymization)

When using the "Encrypt" anonymization operator, PII entities are encrypted with per-key AES-256-GCM so they can be decrypted later via the Deanonymize feature.

Algorithm: AES-256-GCM with random nonce per entity
Key Lengths: 128-bit, 192-bit, or 256-bit (256-bit recommended and default)
Key Storage: Zero-knowledge: key values never leave the Rust backend. Frontend only references keys by ID.
Key Rotation: Generates new key material. Old key value is permanently replaced. Documents encrypted with old key require old key value for decryption.

Authentication

Password Handling: Passwords are hashed client-side using Argon2id + HKDF + SHA-256 before any server communication. The server never receives plaintext passwords.
Session Tokens: JWT with separate secrets for user and admin authentication. Tokens stored in sessionStorage (cleared on tab close).
Admin Authentication: Separate JWT secret (ADMIN_JWT_SECRET). 12-character minimum password. TOTP-based two-factor authentication.

What the Server Sees

The anonym.plus server handles account management, licensing, and license purchases. Here is exactly what it can and cannot access:

Can access: Email address, license status, machine activations, support tickets, payment metadata (via Stripe/PayPal).
Cannot access: Your documents, PII detection results, anonymized outputs, encryption keys, vault contents, processing history, or password.

For a full breakdown of collected data, see the Privacy Policy.

Responsible Disclosure

Report a Security Vulnerability

If you discover a security vulnerability in anonym.plus, we encourage responsible disclosure. Please report it through our contact form with the category "Security".

When reporting, please include: a description of the vulnerability, steps to reproduce, the affected version, and the potential impact.

We aim to acknowledge reports within 48 hours and provide a fix timeline within 7 days. We will not take legal action against researchers who follow responsible disclosure practices.

Our security contact information is also available at /.well-known/security.txt (RFC 9116).

Open Source Components

anonym.plus uses the following open-source components for its security-critical functions:

Microsoft Presidio — PII detection engine (Apache 2.0)
spaCy — NLP models for named entity recognition (MIT)
Tesseract OCR — Image text extraction (Apache 2.0)
Tauri — Desktop app framework with Rust backend (MIT/Apache 2.0)
Argon2 — Password hashing / key derivation (CC0)

References

Microsoft Presidio — GitHub repository
spaCy — Industrial-strength NLP
RFC 5116 — AES-GCM authenticated encryption specification
RFC 9106 — Argon2 memory-hard function specification
BIP39 — Mnemonic code specification
GDPR — General Data Protection Regulation full text

Important Security Considerations

Zero-knowledge architecture has inherent security trade-offs you should understand:

Recovery phrase is critical: Lost recovery phrase means permanent data loss. There is no cloud backup or admin recovery by design.
Local-only security: Encryption protects data only on your device. Shared computers or compromised systems can expose unencrypted data.
No password reset: Forgot your 6-digit PIN? You must use your 24-word recovery phrase. No email recovery option exists by design (zero-knowledge boundary).