Encrypted before it ever leaves your machine

A backup is a complete copy of your most sensitive data. SQLBackup treats it that way — authenticated AES-256 encryption applied client-side, with keys that never leave your control.

Authenticated AES-256-GCM, chunk by chunk

Your compressed dump is encrypted in 64 KB chunks. Each chunk gets a fresh random nonce and authenticates its own index as associated data — so chunks can't be reordered, dropped, or swapped between files without the decrypt failing.

scrypt key derivation

Your password becomes a 256-bit key via scrypt (n=2¹⁴, r=8, p=1) with a random per-file salt — slow to brute-force by design.

Per-chunk authentication

GCM tags detect any tampering or corruption. A modified backup doesn't silently restore garbage — it refuses to decrypt.

Streaming, any size

Chunked design means a 2 GB or 200 GB backup encrypts with the same tiny, constant memory footprint.

SQLBKENC1 · scrypt(n=2¹⁴) · AES-256-GCM live
Plaintextanalytics_full_20260626.dump.gz
scrypt(password, salt) → 256-bit key · fresh nonce per chunk
Ciphertext
File formatMAGIC(9) · SALT(16) · [ LEN(4) · NONCE(12) · CT+TAG ] × N

256-bit
AES key
96-bit
nonce / chunk
64 KB
chunk size

What SQLBackup protects against

Clear about what's covered — and honest about what's still on you.

Storage provider breach

If your S3 bucket or SFTP server is compromised, attackers get ciphertext only. Without your password-derived key, it's useless.

Network interception

Backups are already encrypted at the application layer before transfer, so a tapped connection still only sees opaque bytes.

Silent tampering

GCM authentication means an altered or truncated backup fails loudly on restore instead of quietly corrupting your data.

Vendor lock-in & snooping

There's no SQLBackup server. Nothing phones home. We can't read your data because it never touches us.

Secrets in config files

Reference passwords by environment-variable name. Credentials and the encryption key stay out of config.yaml.

Your responsibility

If you lose your encryption password, the backup is unrecoverable — by design. Store it in a password manager or secrets vault.

Security you can verify, not just trust

Standard crypto

AES-256-GCM and scrypt from a mature, audited cryptography library — no home-rolled algorithms.

Industry-standard primitives
Open source

The encryption format and every line of backup logic is public under the MIT license. Audit it yourself.

Nothing hidden
Zero telemetry

No analytics, no accounts, no callbacks. The only network traffic is to your own databases and storage.

No phone-home
You hold the keys

The encryption password is yours alone. We have no master key, no recovery backdoor, no copy.

No backdoors