File encryption for people who don't trust 'military-grade' marketing

What actually matters on a product page

Which cipher and mode (AES-256-GCM and ChaCha20-Poly1305 are current defaults). Which key-derivation function and its cost (PBKDF2 with a high iteration count, Argon2id with sensible memory). Whether the client talks to any server. Whether the source is inspectable. Whether the vendor has an incentive-aligned end (open source, receivership, source escrow).

Smells to walk away from

'Military-grade' with no primitive named. 'Zero-knowledge' as the only cryptographic claim. Screenshots of soldiers or padlocks. A pricing page that talks about 'peace of mind' more than the key-derivation function. No mention of an audit or open-source status.

How Elba tries to be honest

AES-256-GCM, PBKDF2 with 600,000 iterations, WebCrypto in a Chromium browser. Source ships in the file — right-click, view source. Becomes open source on 1 January 2030 by license. Makes zero network calls; verify this yourself in DevTools.

Questions people actually ask

Is AES-256 actually strong?

Yes — genuinely. The marketing is silly, not the cipher.

Why does key derivation matter?

Because your passphrase is the weak link. Slow derivation makes brute-forcing weak passwords orders of magnitude more expensive.

Is 'zero-knowledge' meaningless?

No — it's a real term. It's just often used by services that also want you to give them your files, which is the tension.

Read the full guide

• AES-256-GCM, explained without a maths degree

  AES-256-GCM in one page — what it is, why Elba uses it, and what it does and doesn't protect against.

• Verifiable privacy: why you should be able to read the code

  Verifiable privacy tools let you inspect what they do before trusting them. Elba's whole program is inside one HTML file — open it in a text editor.