A secret is something an application wishes to store securely. A good example is a password that an application needs to save and use at a later date.

Within this API a secret value is treated as an array of bytes. It is recommended that a secret consist of user-readable text, although this API has no such requirement.

Applications wishing to store multiple values as part of a single secret, may choose to use a textual format to combine these values into one. For example, multiple values may be combined using the 'desktop' key file format, or XML.

Secrets may be encrypted when transferred to or from the client application.

The Secret structure encapsulates a secret value along with its transfer encryption parameters.