HITE — Hulya Integrated Temporal Encryption

HITE is the framework's own symmetric encryption. At its core it's AES-256-GCM — standard, audited, authenticated encryption — with one thing added that is pure Zeq: the Zeqond is bound into the ciphertext itself. A HITE-sealed payload doesn't just protect its contents; it carries an unforgeable record of when it was sealed, checked cryptographically on the way out.

Temporal binding — the Zeq part

Before encryption, the current Zeqond (the framework's tick, 0.777 s) is embedded in the plaintext alongside the payload:

$$\text{sealed} = \text{AES\text{-}256\text{-}GCM}\bigl(\ \text{payload} \mid \tau_{\text{issued}}\ \bigr)$$

On decryption, HITE checks that the recovered tick equals the issuance tick. Because that value is inside the authenticated ciphertext, it cannot be altered without breaking the GCM tag — so the seal is provably tied to the moment it was created. There's no rolling expiry window and nothing to trust about a clock on the wire: the time is part of the message, and the message is authenticated.

What a seal carries

128-bit GCM tag

Every seal carries an authentication tag. Flip a single bit of the ciphertext and decryption refuses — tampering is detected, never silently accepted.

ZEQDrop ID

A short handle (the first hex of the sealed output, from the GCM IV) so a seal can be referenced and looked up without exposing its contents.

Landauer certificate

Each seal reports the thermodynamic floor for erasing its bits — the framework's honesty about the physical cost of the operation, via the LZ1 operator.

The wire format is compact and self-contained: hex( iv[12] | tag[16] | ciphertext ). The key is derived from a high-entropy secret by PBKDF2-SHA256 (210,000 iterations) — a short or guessable secret is refused outright.

Seal and open

Encrypt a payload — the response hands back the ciphertext, its IV, the Zeqond it was sealed at, and a ZEQDrop handle:

curl -sX POST https://zeqsdk.com/api/hite/encrypt \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ZEQ_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"plaintext":"the message"}'
# → { "ciphertext":"…", "iv":"…", "zeqdropId":"…",
#     "zeqond": 2296532592, "phase": 0.0478, "algorithm":"AES-256-GCM", … }

Open it again — HITE decrypts, verifies the GCM tag, and confirms the bound tick:

curl -sX POST https://zeqsdk.com/api/hite/decrypt \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ZEQ_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"ciphertext":"…","iv":"…"}'
# → { "plaintext":"the message", "verified": true, "algorithm":"AES-256-GCM" }

The IV is load-bearing — it is the ciphertext's key material for that seal. Changing a single character makes the payload permanently unrecoverable, by design. You can also choose a stronger key derivation with "kdf":"argon2id" when sealing.

TESC — one-Zeqond channels

Built on the same primitive, TESC (Temporal Entangled State Channel) sends a message with a Phase-Locked Authentication Tag (PLAT) that is valid for exactly one Zeqond (0.777 s). Where a HITE seal records its moment, a TESC message expires at the next tick — a message whose authenticity is scoped to a single beat of the clock.

curl -sX POST https://zeqsdk.com/api/tesc/send \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ZEQ_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"message":"…","channelId":"…"}'

Carry a seal inside a photo

Because a HITE seal is just bytes, it can ride inside an ordinary file. The HITE Carrier tucks a sealed payload into a host photo or PDF where every decoder already ignores it — a JPEG APP15 marker, a PNG zeQc ancillary chunk — so the host stays a byte-valid, normally-openable file with no visible trace. There's no plaintext marker to find; the payload's presence is confirmed only by a successful decrypt. This is how you can hide your equation-credential in an image: a normal-looking photo that quietly is your recovery key.

Where HITE stands against a quantum adversary

HITE is symmetric-only and leans on AES-256's resistance to Grover's algorithm: a quantum search halves the effective key length, leaving 2¹²⁸ bits of security — still far beyond reach. It makes no hash-based-signature claims it can't keep. The framework's full quantum stance, and what a quantum adversary does and does not break, is in the post-quantum posture.

Read next

• ZSC — the secure context — where the keys HITE uses are held and rotated.
• Post-quantum posture — the framework's quantum threat model.
• The clock — the Zeqond that HITE binds into every seal.

The encryption endpoints are in the security reference.