kinetic-cipher 1.0.0

Dual Physics Stream Cipher — elastic collision + FPU lattice keystream generators

Kinetic Cipher

Dual Physics Stream Cipher — Zero dependencies, pure Python.

A novel symmetric encryption scheme that uses two independent physics simulations as keystream generators:

• Skeleton layer: Elastic collision of 14 particles on a 1D ring (346-bit state)
• Armor layer: Fermi-Pasta-Ulam nonlinear lattice with 32 nodes (1024-bit state)

No prior art found for either physics-to-keystream mechanism.

⚠ Educational / Experimental — No formal mathematical security proof exists. For production systems, use AES-256-GCM.

Install

pip install kinetic-cipher

Zero dependencies. Uses only Python standard library (hashlib, hmac, os, struct).

Quick Start

Python API

from kinetic_cipher import encrypt, decrypt

# Encrypt
ciphertext = encrypt(b"Hello, Kinetic Cipher!", "my-secret-passphrase")

# Decrypt
plaintext = decrypt(ciphertext, "my-secret-passphrase")
print(plaintext)  # b"Hello, Kinetic Cipher!"

File Encryption

from kinetic_cipher import encrypt_file, decrypt_file

# Encrypt a file (original filename is preserved)
encrypt_file("report.pdf", "report.pdf.kc", "my-passphrase")

# Decrypt (original filename is restored automatically)
decrypt_file("report.pdf.kc", "./output/", "my-passphrase")
# → ./output/report.pdf

Command Line

# Encrypt a file
kinetic-cipher enc secret.txt -o secret.txt.kc

# Decrypt a file
kinetic-cipher dec secret.txt.kc -o ./decrypted/

# Encrypt text directly
kinetic-cipher enc -t "Hello World"

# Run self-test
kinetic-cipher test

# Benchmark
kinetic-cipher bench

Wire Format

[version 1B][salt 16B][iv 8B][ciphertext NB][hmac-sha256 32B]

• Version: 0x05 (Kinetic Cipher v1.0)
• Salt: 16 random bytes for PBKDF2 key derivation
• IV: 8 random bytes, unique per message
• HMAC: Encrypt-then-MAC authentication

Security Properties

Property	Value
Key derivation	PBKDF2-SHA256, 100,000 iterations
Authentication	HMAC-SHA256, Encrypt-then-MAC
Skeleton state space	346 bits (post-Grover: 2¹⁷³)
Armor state space	1024 bits (post-Grover: 2⁵¹²)
Byte distribution χ²	271.9 (pass)
Key avalanche	49.9%
IV avalanche	49.9%
Known-plaintext prediction	0% success
Autocorrelation	All lags
Compression ratio	100.0% (= true random)

Performance

Pure Python, single-threaded:

Size	Time	Speed
1 KB	~0.2s	~5 KB/s
10 KB	~1.5s	~7 KB/s
100 KB	~14s	~7 KB/s

For higher performance, use the Rust/WASM implementation (~23 MB/s) or the JS implementation included in the repository.

How It Works

1. Key Derivation: Passphrase → PBKDF2-SHA256 (100K iterations) → 104-byte key material
2. Particle Init: First 56 bytes seed 14 particles with position, velocity, and mass on a ring of size 16,384
3. Lattice Init: Remaining 48 bytes seed a 32-node FPU nonlinear lattice
4. Warmup: 64 collision steps + 32 lattice steps to mix initial state
5. Encryption: Per 64-byte block:
   • CC generates 16 keystream bytes (particle state hash)
   • LS generates 48 keystream bytes (3 × lattice state hash)
   • XOR plaintext with 64-byte combined keystream
   • Hash all cipher bytes back into CC state (feedback)
6. Authentication: HMAC-SHA256 over version + salt + IV + ciphertext

Cross-Platform Compatibility

The algorithm uses only integer arithmetic (no floating point), so implementations in any language produce identical ciphertext for the same inputs. Test vectors are provided in tests/test_vectors.json.

Implementations:

• Python (this package) — reference implementation
• Rust/WASM — ~23 MB/s, 13.5 KB binary (in repository)
• JavaScript/React — browser app (in repository)

Limitations

• No security proof: Strength is empirically tested, not mathematically proven
• Speed: Pure Python is ~7 KB/s (use Rust/WASM for performance-critical applications)
• Novel algorithm: Has not been subjected to years of public cryptanalysis like AES

License

MIT

Citation

If you use Kinetic Cipher in academic work:

Kinetic Cipher: A Dual Physics Stream Cipher Using Elastic Collision
and Fermi-Pasta-Ulam Lattice Keystream Generators. 2026.
Designed with AI assistance (Claude, Anthropic; reviewed by Gemini, Google).
https://github.com/kinetic-cipher/kinetic-cipher