Design and Performance Evaluation of a Post-Quantum Password Manager Using Argon2id, AES-256-GCM, and ML-KEM

Abstract: Quantum computing. It also requires that we think about post‑quantum methods to keep sensitive credentials safe for a long time. This paper presents a post‑quantum password manager that uses Argon2id to derive keys, from passwords AES‑256‑GCM to encrypt the vault with authentication and ML‑KEM to set up post‑quantum keys. The versions ML‑KEM‑512, ML‑KEM‑768 and ML‑KEM‑1024 were. Tested under identical conditions using twenty benchmarks. We examined generation, encapsulation, decapsulation, the size of cryptographic objects and how the password vault works. The computational cost and storage space grow as the ML‑KEM parameter set becomes larger. ML‑KEM‑768 turned out to balance security, performance and storage so it was chosen for the password‑manager prototype.

Keywords: Post‑Quantum Cryptography, Password Manager, Argon2id, AES‑256‑GCM, Password Security, Cryptographic Performance