What the trusted contact does
1
Open the trusted contact portal
The contact uses their portal link.
2
Unlock their private key
They enter the passphrase created during share activation.
3
Unseal the share locally
The browser decrypts the contact-held share. The plaintext share is not sent to the server.
4
Re-encrypt to the beneficiary
The browser encrypts the share to the beneficiary recovery session public key.
5
Submit the release
Eternum stores the beneficiary-bound ciphertext in volatile recovery storage.
Release storage
Released shares are stored in volatile release Redis (never written to disk) with a 14-day time-to-live, so trusted contacts can release days or weeks apart. They are bound to a beneficiary recovery session and are not reusable across sessions.The beneficiary’s recovery key is kept in their browser, so recovery should be completed on the same device and browser. If a recovery session expires, the beneficiary may need to start a new session and ask contacts to release shares again.