Get involved
Fortress Crypt is a small, openly-run project that gets stronger with every outside eye on it. The source is public at code.fortresscrypt.com — and there’s real, specific work available for a wide range of skills.
Ways to help, in order of current need
1. Security review & cryptanalysis
The project has not had a formal third-party audit. If you can read a cryptographic specification adversarially — look for forged-header attacks, side channels, KDF misuse, or format-level weaknesses — this is the highest-value help available. See the Security & Transparency page for the threat model and current findings register.
2. Code contributions
Bug fixes, tests, performance, portability, UI, and build tooling across the Python core, iOS app, and Android app are all welcome. Cryptographic design changes need discussion first — novel primitives or “clever” tweaks to the cascade are declined regardless of quality; the goal is standard, vetted building blocks, not new cryptography.
3. Cross-platform testing
A file encrypted on one platform must decrypt correctly on the other two. Testing edge cases — large files, unusual security levels, interrupted writes, low-memory devices — across Python, iOS, and Android surfaces the interoperability bugs that matter most.
4. Documentation & translation
Clear docs make a cryptographic tool safer to use correctly. Improving the specification, writing guides, or translating the project’s documentation and this site into other languages all directly reduce the chance someone misuses a security feature.
5. Spread the word
More eyes means more review. If you know cryptographers, security researchers, or mobile engineers who’d find this interesting, point them here — particularly to the Security & Transparency page.
How the license works, in plain terms
Fortress Crypt is licensed AGPL-3.0 to the public, today, with no plans to take that away from existing users. The maintainer, Steve Watts / The Lion’s Kingdom IT Solutions, LLC, retains copyright of the project as a whole and is not currently selling commercial licenses — that’s a possibility being kept open for later, once the project has matured, not a present-day paywall.
To merge a contribution into the official distribution, contributors sign a short Contributor License Agreement (CLA). In plain terms:
- You keep your copyright. You are not signing your work away — you grant the maintainer a broad license to use it (including, eventually, under commercial terms), while you remain the copyright holder of your own contribution.
- You don’t have to sign it. The AGPL-3.0 already gives you full rights to fork and modify Fortress Crypt on your own terms. You just can’t merge unsigned changes into the maintainer’s official distribution.
- This is a well-precedented model — the same approach used by MongoDB, Qt, and other dual-licensed open-source projects, chosen so the project can stay free for everyone today while funding its long-term maintenance later.
Non-negotiable ground rules for contributions, because this is encryption software: no novel cryptographic primitives or modes, no changes to the file format or KDF labels without a version bump, no weakening of constant-time comparisons, and no changes to the trap/duress separation that keeps the audit fork reviewable. Design changes should reference peer-reviewed sources or come with real analysis.
Get in touch
The code repository is public at code.fortresscrypt.com. Reach the maintainer directly: admin@fortresscrypt.com. Security findings, questions about the CLA or the future commercial license, and offers to help are all welcome there.