🔒 ATLOCK v4 — I stopped trusting my own app's encryption, so I rebuilt it
TL;DR — ATLOCK is a single-.exe Windows security suite: system lockdown, NTFS-level file protection, an encrypted password vault, and automatic intruder capture. v4 rewrites the encryption from the ground up, kills every cloud dependency, and ships as one portable file. No installer. No account. No internet required.
If you've used ATLOCK before, you know the pitch: real OS-level security, not a password box pretending to be one. v4 is the version where I finally stopped cutting corners.
🧨 Why v4 Exists
Here's the uncomfortable truth: I wasn't confident in v3's encryption scheme. And I wasn't going to keep shipping something that calls itself a "security suite" while the one thing that actually needs to be bulletproof — the vault — was running on a weaker encoding layer.
So I gutted it. Rebuilt the encryption from zero. And while I was in there, I made a much bigger call:
ATLOCK v4 runs 100% offline — it doesn't need the internet to do a single thing it promises.
⚙️ Everything ATLOCK v4 Does
🔐 System Lockdown
Lock your entire machine for a set duration — and once it's locked, there's no casual way out.
Alt+Tab, the Win key, Esc, and Alt+F4 are all blocked system-wide via a low-level keyboard hook
A background watchdog thread kills Task Manager (and similar process-monitoring tools) the instant they're launched
One emergency halve option exists for genuine emergencies — it's not a loophole, it's a safety valve
🛡 File Guard — Real OS-Level Protection
This is the feature I'm proudest of, because it isn't a trick.
Most "file lock" apps just hide a file or rename its extension. File Guard instead applies NTFS Access Control Lists (ACLs) directly at the file-system level — the deepest layer of permission control Windows exposes to any application.
Protected files can't be opened, moved, copied, or deleted by anyone — not even an administrator — until they're explicitly unlocked.
Guard up to 10 files simultaneously
3 wrong unlock attempts trigger the intrusion response pipeline (see below)
🔑 Encrypted Password Vault — Rebuilt From Zero
This is the headline change in v4.
v3v4EncryptionWeak encoding schemeAES (Fernet)Key
derivationNonePBKDF2-HMAC-SHA256, 200k iterationsFailed attemptsLoggedMasked before logging — never stored in plaintextLockoutNone10-hour hard lockout after 4 wrong attempts
Store emails, UPI PINs, banking details — anything sensitive — locally, encrypted, with zero cloud sync. (Yes, I locked myself out testing the 4-attempt lockout. It works exactly as designed. Painfully well.)
📸 Intruder Ops — Automatic Escalation
Every wrong password attempt gets an actual response, not just a log entry:
1st wrong attempt → a photo is captured instantly
Escalating attempts → a 10-second video is recorded
Critical threshold → an audible alarm triggers
All captured media saves straight to your Pictures/Videos folders — no cloud upload, no third party ever sees it.
🔔 Live Security Notification Center
A real-time in-app panel tracks every security event as it happens:
Failed unlocks
Intruder attempts
File Guard triggers
Complete with a live unread counter, and logs that auto-clear after 24 hours so the app never becomes a bloated mess of old alerts.
🆚 v3 → v4: What Actually Changed
✅ Vault encryption rebuilt — real AES + PBKDF2, not encoding tricks
✅ Intruder Ops pipeline built for a clean photo → video → alarm escalation
✅ Settings panel redesigned with clearer, simpler toggles
🧰 The Tech Stack
LayerToolCore
logicPythonUICustomTkinterIntruder
captureOpenCVVault
encryptionCryptography (Fernet + PBKDF2)File-level
lockdownWin32 API (NTFS ACLs, low-level input hooks)
PackagingPyInstaller → single portable .exe
The NTFS ACL implementation was, by far, the hardest part to get right. If there's interest, I'll write a dedicated deep-dive on how File Guard actually manipulates permissions at the OS level.
⚠️ One Thing to Know Before You Download
Windows Defender/SmartScreen may flag ATLOCK as "unrecognized." This is a known false positive — it's what happens to unsigned, PyInstaller-built Python apps, not a sign of anything malicious. Code-signing certificates cost money a solo dev project doesn't have yet.
Click "More info" → "Run anyway" and you're good.
🚀 Try It
ATLOCK is free, single-file, and requires nothing but Windows 10 or later.
🔗 GitHub: https://github.com/Akhouri-Anmol-Kumar/ATLOCK
⬇️ Latest release: grab ATLOCK.zip from the Releases tab
If you try it, I want your feedback — bugs, complaints, feature requests, all of it. And if it's useful to you, a ⭐ on the repo genuinely matters for a solo project like this.
🧭 What's next
More tools live in the same repo family under Akhouri Systems — a notepad replacement, a fully customizable calculator, and an image processing suite. Same philosophy every time: build the thing that should have existed already.
"We Build What Other Forgot To Fix"
Contact Us on- akhourisystems@gmail.com
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