Use case

Communications security for executives and high-value targets

If you are a deliberately chosen target — for your access, your deals, or your net worth — RVNT removes the phone number that SIM-swap attackers hijack and adds on-device defenses for when the threat is physical. It is pre-release and unaudited, so read the honest caveats before you rely on it.

The threat model

SIM-swap / port-out account takeover: an attacker socially engineers, bribes, or phishes your mobile carrier to move your number to their SIM, then intercepts the SMS one-time codes that guard your email, bank, and crypto accounts. The FBI's IC3 logged 1,611 such complaints in 2021 alone with adjusted losses over $68 million, and high-value individuals are a primary target.
Spear-phishing and whaling: a tailored message — impersonating your CFO, your lawyer, or a board member — that exploits what an attacker has researched about you specifically, aiming for a wire transfer, credential, or a foothold on your device.
Corporate and competitive espionage on live deals: a rival, an activist investor, or a hired intelligence firm trying to read M&A terms, board deliberations, or negotiating positions by compromising the channel you discuss them on, then reconstructing who-talked-to-whom even if content is encrypted.
Targeted device theft and coerced unlock: a thief or operative who specifically wants YOUR phone or laptop — at a hotel, an airport, an event — to extract correspondence, or who forces you to unlock it under threat.
Metadata mapping of your inner circle: an adversary who cannot read your messages but watches the pattern — that you message a specific banker the night before a deal leaks — to infer the deal, the source, or the org chart.

Why mainstream apps fall short

Mainstream messengers are tied to a phone number, which is the single point of failure for a high-value target. A successful SIM swap doesn't just hijack SMS 2FA — on number-based apps it can be leveraged to re-register your messaging account on the attacker's device. Removing the phone number entirely removes that attack surface.
Even strong end-to-end-encrypted apps still let their server see the social graph — that you and a specific counterparty exchanged messages at a specific time. For an executive, the existence and timing of a conversation (a banker the night before an acquisition) can itself be the leak, independent of content.
Consumer apps assume your adversary is opportunistic, not a funded, persistent operation that has researched you by name. They lack on-device defenses for the targeted-theft and coerced-unlock scenarios a high-value individual actually faces.
Convenience features that help most users — cloud backups, message history synced to a server, recovery via phone number or email — are exactly the recovery paths an attacker exploits to take over a targeted account, and they are hard to fully disable.

How RVNT maps to those needs

Eliminate the SIM-swap attack surface — no phone number that a carrier can be tricked into reassigning

Proof-of-work identity: a local Ed25519 keypair claimed by computational work, with no phone number, email, or KYC anywhere in the system

Hide who you talk to and when, so the existence and timing of a sensitive conversation cannot leak a deal or a source

Sealed sender — the sender's identity is encrypted inside the envelope, so relays and the network see only an opaque blob and a truncated recipient hash, not a social graph

Defeat traffic-pattern analysis that infers a deal from messaging timing even when content is encrypted

Routes over Tor by default plus a mixnet with fixed-size padding and cover traffic to blunt timing and length correlation

Protect against targeted device theft and coerced unlock at travel, events, or hostile stops

Duress PIN that silently triggers panic mode and shows a decoy state, plus cryptographic panic wipe of keys and database

Make a stolen device useless without your secret — no stored key an attacker can lift from the keychain

PIN-as-encryption-key: the PIN is the sole input to Argon2id (64 MB memory cost) that derives the SQLCipher database key; there is no separately stored key and no recovery path

The legal & regulatory reality

RVNT makes no compliance claims. It is not HIPAA-, SOX-, GLBA-, or SEC-recordkeeping-compliant, offers no Business Associate Agreement, and provides no enterprise audit, retention, eDiscovery, or legal-hold features. In fact, the no-server-content and no-recovery design is the opposite of what regulated firms need for books-and-records and supervision obligations — if your communications are subject to mandatory retention (e.g., FINRA/SEC rules for broker-dealers and advisers), an app built to leave no recoverable trail can put you out of compliance. RVNT is a tool for personal communications security, not a system of record. Consult your General Counsel and compliance team before using any non-approved messenger for company business.

Where RVNT is the wrong tool

RVNT is pre-release software and has NOT undergone an independent third-party security audit. Do not treat it as a vetted, battle-tested product. For decisions where your safety, liberty, or fiduciary duties are at stake, established and audited tools plus professional security advice come first.
No messenger can protect you from a compromised endpoint. If an attacker plants a targeted implant or zero-click exploit on your phone or laptop — the kind of capability nation-states and top-tier commercial spyware vendors sell — they read your screen before encryption ever happens, and RVNT cannot stop that. Hardened devices, managed-device hygiene, and a corporate security team matter more than any app here.
RVNT is not an enterprise platform: no central admin, no provisioning, no compliance/retention/audit tooling, no support SLA. It does not replace your firm's sanctioned, supervised communications systems for company business.
On a relay (when two peers cannot connect directly), file transfers are capped at 256 MB and the connection metadata trade-offs change; the 'no size limit' property holds only on a direct peer-to-peer link. Verify your contact's safety number out-of-band, or you are not protected against a man-in-the-middle during the first key exchange.

Frequently asked questions

My phone gets stolen at an event, or someone forces me to unlock it. What happens to my conversations?

At rest, the local database is SQLCipher (AES-256) keyed by your PIN through Argon2id (64 MB memory cost) — there is no separately stored key to lift and no 'forgot PIN' recovery path, so a powered-off, locked device is cryptographically inaccessible. If you are coerced into unlocking, the duress PIN lets you enter a secondary PIN that silently triggers a panic wipe and shows a decoy state instead of your real data. Be aware the duress feature is irreversible and a sophisticated adversary may detect the decoy; it is a defense, not a guarantee.

RVNT is a post-quantum, peer-to-peer, end-to-end-encrypted messenger with no phone number and no servers — open source, and honest about being early.

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