Research · Library

Primary sources

Read the standards, specifications and papers behind the explanations. Sources were checked through September 5, 2026; their own publication dates and scope remain attached.

Explainer

On this page

Cryptographic standards

These define primitives used or discussed by Auris. Citing a standard is not certification of the application or proof of its composition.

FIPS 203 · ML-KEM: NIST, August 13, 2024. Parameter sets and key-encapsulation algorithms. The source page carries a November 17, 2025 planning note linking potential errata; use the maintained record with the frozen standard.
FIPS 204 · ML-DSA: NIST, August 13, 2024. Digital signatures; the maintained record includes a July 31, 2026 note about potential corrections. A document saying only “the 2024 standard” can miss later errata.
RFC 7748 · X25519 and RFC 8032 · Ed25519: Classical elliptic-curve key agreement and signatures. They serve different roles and have different post-quantum limitations.
RFC 5869 · HKDF: Extraction, expansion, salt and context. Useful when checking exactly which input is the key and which is data in a root derivation.
RFC 8439 · ChaCha20-Poly1305: Authenticated encryption and nonce requirements. A protocol’s separate key-commitment claim needs additional analysis.
RFC 9106 · Argon2: Memory-hard password hashing. Auris’s one-lane profile is not byte-identical to the RFC’s four-lane, 64-MiB second recommendation.

Messaging specifications

Signal · PQXDH: Revision 3; source last updated January 23, 2024. Defines asynchronous hybrid key agreement, and explicitly scopes authentication and deniability. Its limitations must not be generalized to every later Signal protocol.
Signal · Double Ratchet: Revision 4, November 4, 2025. Includes Sparse Post-Quantum Ratchet and Triple Ratchet constructions. This is a relevant current specification baseline, not a theorem about Auris’s custom ratchet.
Signal · ML-KEM Braid: Revision 1, last updated September 26, 2025. Sparse continuous key agreement, chunking, vulnerable-message sets and formal-analysis references.
Signal · Sealed Sender: 2018 design explanation. Removing an explicit sender identifier is different from defeating traffic correlation.
SimpleX · Protocol layers and channels: Maintained architecture documentation, retrieved September 5, 2026. Describes transport, messaging agents, post-quantum ratcheting and application layers.
SimpleX · Network design: Queue-based addressing and the absence of network-wide user identifiers. Account structure is one comparison dimension; it does not settle every privacy property.
SimpleX · Public names: July 22, 2026 announcement of optional discovery names and test availability in v7-beta. Optional public naming is distinct from mandatory network-wide messaging identifiers; this announcement is not a fresh attestation of every current deployment.
SimpleX · July 2024 design-review record: October 14, 2024 publication linking the Trail of Bits report and the project’s responses. The named review scope and version should accompany any assurance comparison.

Hybrid KEMs and deniable authentication

X-Wing: The Hybrid KEM You’ve Been Looking For: Manuel Barbosa, Deirdre Connolly, João Diogo Duarte, Aaron Kaiser, Peter Schwabe, Karolin Varner and Bas Westerbaan; IACR Communications in Cryptology, 2024. Auris R2 pins the related draft 10, rather than following a moving draft implicitly.
Post-Quantum TLS without handshake signatures: Peter Schwabe, Douglas Stebila and Thom Wiggers; ACM CCS 2020. KEM-based authentication prior art; historical performance configurations are not automatically current primitive recommendations.
Keeping Up with the KEMs: Cas Cremers, Alexander Dax and Niklas Medinger; ACM CCS 2024, full version 1.1.1 dated August 2, 2024. Stronger KEM binding notions and automated protocol analysis.
Unbindable Kemmy Schmidt: Sophie Schmieg, 2024. Counterexamples under maliciously formed key material show why the precise binding notion matters.
K-Waay: Fast and Deniable Post-Quantum X3DH without Ring Signatures: USENIX Security 2024. A primary comparison for post-quantum deniable handshake research.
Bundled Authenticated Key Exchange: Keitaro Hashimoto, Shuichi Katsumata and Thom Wiggers; USENIX Security 2025. Analysis of shared prekey-bundle state and the RingXKEM construction.
Comprehensive Deniability Analysis of Signal Handshake Protocols: Shuichi Katsumata, Guilhem Niot, Ida Tucker and Thom Wiggers; USENIX Security 2025. Different deniability definitions and post-quantum constructions need their own treatment.

Transport, media and platform

The Noise Protocol Framework: The classical NK pattern is relevant to Auris’s pinned inner transport. The custom hybrid extension requires its own analysis.
RFC 5764 · DTLS-SRTP: Transport key establishment for secure real-time media; peer identity binding and Auris’s additional frame layer are separate integration questions.
RFC 6716 · Opus: The codec specification. Current codec implementations and enabled features must be checked separately; Auris’s quality is an empirical question.
RFC 9605 · SFrame: August 2024 secure-frame standard. Referenced as potential hardening work, not claimed as Auris’s implemented wire format.
Apple Platform Security · Keychain data protection: Keychain protection classes and access-control background. A class’s API contract is not a forensic guarantee about every device.

Formal tools and Auris’s public artifact

Tamarin Prover manual: Modeling and trace-property background. Reproductions must record the actual prover version rather than relying on a moving manual branch.
Auris R2 · Revision 1.16: Max Von, The Auris Project; July 22, 2026. Public conditional pre-use root-key paper and reproduction bundle. Scope, downloads and checksums.

The internal editorial source register records retrieval results and hashes. A failed fetch is retained as a failed fetch; a source title, a release plan or a working link alone does not prove the associated security claim.

Reviewed 2026-09-05 · Review scope and versions