ACS-WP-2026-064: Hardware-Bound Cryptography & Zero-Mask Ground Truth

Executive Abstract

In sovereign defense enclaves, software-level encryption and plaintext environment variables (.env) fail to satisfy zero-trust supply chain mandates. This specification details Aetherion's hardware-bound cryptographic root of trust (TPM 2.0 PCR sealing and Windows DPAPI-NG / VBS isolation) combined with P.H.A.L.A.N.X. (evolved from the Aetherion Sovereign Threat Scanner, ASTS), which enforces the Zero-Mask ground truth doctrine across polyglot source trees (TypeScript, Python, C#, Rust, and AI agent prompts).

1. Hardware-Bound Roots of Trust (Mandate 1)

All master keys, API credentials, and identity tokens in Aetherion products are physically sealed to host silicon:

TPM 2.0 PCR Sealing: Secrets are tied to Platform Configuration Registers (PCR indices 0, 2, 4, 11) ensuring boot integrity before decryption.
Windows DPAPI-NG: Hardware-backed CNG key isolation utilizing Virtualization-Based Security (VBS VTL 1).
VirtualLock Memory Zeroization: Dynamic buffers holding cryptographic keys are locked in unpageable RAM and zeroed via RtlSecureZeroMemory immediately after execution.

2. The Zero-Mask Ground Truth Standard (P.H.A.L.A.N.X.)

The P.H.A.L.A.N.X. concrete syntax tree (CST) engine runs pre-merge static gates across 5 polyglot security rules:

RULE PHALANX-R001

Zero-Mask Fallback Ban

Bans synthetic array/object fallback literals in UI components, requiring authentic EmptyState rendering.

RULE PHALANX-R002

Raw Exception Disclosure Ban

Prevents `str(exc)` exposure in API returns, enforcing sanitized incident UUID masking.

RULE PHALANX-R003

Shannon Entropy Hunter

Scans codebase for high-entropy tokens (>3.2) across 120+ cloud provider credential formats.

RULES PHALANX-R004/005

AI Agent Prompt Defense

Enforces `<untrusted_data>` XML fences on all dynamic prompt inputs to prevent prompt injection attacks.