Quantum-secure distributed storage for critical systems

Abstract

11/11 IPFS is a next-generation, quantum-secure distributed storage network designed for mission-critical workloads across healthcare, enterprise, public sector, and infrastructure. Built on a hybrid architecture that combines decentralized identifiers (DIDs), post-quantum cryptography (PQC), jurisdiction-aware content residency, immutable audit anchors, and client-side encrypted IPFS objects, 11/11 IPFS provides a tamper-resistant, interoperable, and globally scalable approach to secure data retention in a post-quantum world.

Unlike legacy cloud object storage, 11/11 IPFS treats data integrity, sovereignty, auditability, and verifiable access as first-class concerns. The platform establishes a storage substrate capable of powering healthcare platforms, identity systems, enterprise applications, and national-scale registries where the cost of compromise is measured in lives, safety, and systemic risk rather than just short-term incidents.

This whitepaper outlines the architectural design, cryptographic foundations, operational model, compliance alignments, and deployment strategy for the 11/11 IPFS protocol and the broader Atlas Q ecosystem.

1. Introduction

Digital infrastructure is approaching a convergence point where traditional cryptographic primitives, centralized storage architectures, and fragmented regulatory regimes are no longer sufficient to guarantee long-term security and durability of critical information. Three forces drive this transition:

• Quantum computing risk against RSA and ECC-based systems.
• Jurisdictional complexity around data sovereignty and privacy regulation.
• Scale and distribution demands for always-on, globally accessible systems.

11/11 IPFS directly addresses these pressures by combining:

• Client-side AES-GCM encryption for strong confidentiality guarantees.
• Kyber and Dilithium post-quantum primitives for secure key encapsulation and signing.
• Content-addressable storage via deterministic QHASH manifests.
• DID-based access control with verifiable, revocable permissions.
• Immutable, verifiable audit anchors for regulated data and internal control.
• Residency pinsets to meet regional legal requirements across US, EU, APAC, and private clusters.

The result is a global storage network that is not dependent on a single vendor, cloud region, or certificate authority and that is constructed to remain trustworthy even as classical cryptography is weakened or retired.

2. The Storage Problem in a Post-Quantum Era

2.1 Quantum risk against classical cryptography

Most modern organizations rely on RSA-2048, ECC-256, and related algorithms to protect data in transit, server identity, software integrity, user authentication, and encrypted storage. Quantum-enabled adversaries threaten these systems through algorithms that can undermine the hardness assumptions on which they are based. Even before general-purpose quantum computers exist at scale, sophisticated adversaries can engage in "store now, decrypt later" collection, harvesting ciphertext with the intent to break it in the future.

If data stored today must remain confidential for 5 to 20 years or more, classical encryption alone is no longer sufficient. Organizations must plan for a transition to post-quantum cryptography and for architectures that can evolve without complete re-encryption of historical archives.

2.2 Centralization as a single point of failure

Modern cloud and storage architectures tend to centralize risk. A single misconfiguration, a compromised administrator account, a regional outage, or a successful supply-chain attack can expose or interrupt critical data. Traditional perimeter-based security models assume trusted network segments and trusted providers, which no longer matches the modern threat landscape.

When the same provider controls identity, storage, network, and logging, the blast radius of an incident can extend across entire business units or even sectors. For critical systems, this concentration of risk is increasingly unacceptable.

2.3 Compliance and sovereignty fragmentation

Regulations such as HIPAA, GDPR, and emerging national data-localization laws impose requirements on where and how data is stored, how it is accessed, and how events are recorded. Organizations must reconcile:

• Data residency and locality obligations.
• Right-to-erasure and retention policies.
• Audit and reporting requirements.
• Cross-border access by multi-national teams.

A storage architecture that cannot differentiate between jurisdictions or cannot provide verifiable audit histories will struggle to remain compliant as regulations evolve.

3. 11/11 IPFS: System Architecture

11/11 IPFS is neither a blockchain nor a centralized cloud provider. It is a hybrid distributed system that combines IPFS content addressing, decentralized identity, PQC, and regional policy enforcement into a cohesive, verifiable storage layer.

3.1 Core components

• Client-side encryption (AES-GCM). Plaintext never leaves the local environment.
• QHASH manifest. A deterministic hash over encrypted chunk identifiers and metadata.
• Kyber key encapsulation. Post-quantum secure wrapping of data keys per authorized identity.
• Dilithium signatures. Post-quantum signing for audit anchors and control-plane events.
• DID access control. Identity-bound permissions and revocations.
• Residency pinsets. Policy-managed groups of IPFS nodes per jurisdiction or trust domain.
• Immutable audit anchors. Append-only signed logs for every critical operation.
• Enterprise buckets. Tenant-scoped namespaces with custom policy bindings.

3.2 Zero-trust trust boundaries

11/11 IPFS is designed with zero-trust principles:

• No storage node can decrypt content.
• No region can impersonate another region without detection.
• No intermediary can modify records without breaking signatures or QHASH values.
• No administrator can silently bypass access controls.

Integrity and permission verification occur at the client, using DID credentials, PQ signatures, and manifest hashes. Storage nodes are responsible for durability and availability rather than for confidentiality or policy logic.

3.3 End-to-end data flow

At a high level, a typical write operation proceeds as follows:

• The client generates an ephemeral AES-GCM data key and encrypts the object locally.
• The encrypted object is chunked and uploaded to one or more residency pinsets.
• A manifest is created containing encrypted chunk CIDs, metadata, region policy IDs, and owner identity.
• A deterministic QHASH is derived from the manifest.
• The data key is wrapped with Kyber for each authorized DID and stored as a set of key wraps.
• An audit anchor is created and signed with Dilithium, recording the event, the actor, and the QHASH.

Retrieval reverses the process: authorized users present credentials, obtain wrapped keys, verify audit status, fetch encrypted chunks, and decrypt locally.

4. QHASH: Deterministic Manifests

The QHASH format is central to 11/11 IPFS. It defines how encrypted file metadata and content identifiers combine into a deterministic fingerprint.

4.1 Inputs

QHASH is derived from:

• The ordered list of encrypted chunk CIDs.
• The AES-GCM nonce associated with the object.
• File size and content type.
• Owner identity and bucket identifier.
• Region policy identifiers.
• Optional structured metadata relevant to the application domain.

4.2 Determinism and verification

Given identical encrypted data and metadata, QHASH always produces the same value. This enables:

• Detection of tampering or silent modification.
• Reconciliation of replicas and backups across regions.
• Integrity verification in offline or air-gapped environments.
• Stable references for external systems without exposing plaintext.

4.3 Privacy-preserving design

QHASH contains no plaintext content. It can be safely logged, exported, indexed, and used as a reference in external systems without leaking sensitive data. This separation between content and reference is critical for regulated and high-risk environments.

5. Cryptographic Foundations

11/11 IPFS uses only post-quantum cryptographic algorithms selected or recommended by NIST, in combination with modern symmetric primitives.

5.1 AES-GCM for client-side encryption

All encryption is performed on the client using AES-256-GCM. Each object uses a unique nonce, and integrity is enforced via AEAD tags. Storage nodes see only ciphertext and do not possess the keys required to decrypt it.

5.2 Kyber key encapsulation

Kyber is used as a key encapsulation mechanism for data keys. For each authorized DID, the client encapsulates the symmetric key under the recipient's public key. This provides post-quantum–resistant confidentiality for key distribution and supports efficient delegation and revocation without re-encrypting stored content.

5.3 Dilithium signatures

Dilithium is used to sign audit anchors, policy updates, and identity-related metadata. Signatures ensure that control-plane actions are non-repudiable and that audit trails are cryptographically robust against future adversaries.

5.4 SHA-3 hashing

SHA-3–family hash functions are used for content addressing, manifest hashing, and internal identifiers. Hashes are chosen for collision resistance and future robustness.

6. Decentralized Identity and Access Control

Instead of passwords or opaque cloud ACLs, 11/11 IPFS uses decentralized identifiers as the foundation for identity and access control.

6.1 DID credentials

Each user, service, or machine participating in the system is represented by a DID and one or more associated public keys. DID documents describe proof methods, supported signature schemes, and optional attestation chains from organizational identity providers.

6.2 Verifiable permissions

Access rules are expressed as verifiable statements bound to DIDs. Permissions can specify:

• Read, write, and manage rights for a given bucket or object.
• Time-bounded access windows.
• Jurisdictional or residency constraints.
• Delegation scopes for automated services.

Every permission grant or revocation event is signed and anchored in the audit log.

6.3 Revocation without re-encrypting buckets

Because individual data keys are wrapped per recipient, revocation requires only removing or invalidating specific key wraps and updating policy entries. Objects themselves remain encrypted under the same symmetric keys, avoiding expensive global re-encryption operations.

7. Residency Pinsets and Sovereignty Control

Many regulated environments require that data be stored and processed within specific jurisdictions. 11/11 IPFS addresses this through residency pinsets: policy-managed groups of IPFS nodes associated with a region or trust domain.

Organizations can define pinsets such as:

• US-only storage clusters for health data.
• EU-only clusters aligned with GDPR and local rulings.
• APAC regional clusters for latency and localization.
• Private clusters within a hospital, enterprise, or government network.

Policies specify where objects may be pinned, how many replicas are required per region, and how replication events are recorded. Audit anchors track residency over time.

8. Immutable Audit Anchors

Every significant event in 11/11 IPFS is recorded as an append-only, signed audit entry. Examples include:

• Object creation and deletion.
• Access and retrieval events.
• Policy changes and permission grants.
• Key rotation and revocation.
• Region replication activity.

Each anchor includes the actor DID, timestamp, QHASH, event type, and any relevant policy identifiers, signed with Dilithium. Organizations can export logs as CSV, JSON-L, or verifiable credential bundles for independent verification and long-term archival.

9. Enterprise Buckets

Enterprise buckets provide a multi-tenant abstraction layer. Each bucket is bound to a root organizational identity and has:

• Region and residency constraints.
• Retention and deletion rules.
• Key rotation schedules.
• Role-based access policies expressed in terms of DIDs.
• Metadata conventions for domain-specific workloads.

This structure allows large organizations to segment projects, departments, and regulatory obligations while still relying on a unified 11/11 IPFS fabric.

10. Compliance Alignment

11/11 IPFS is designed to align with major security and privacy frameworks, including:

• HIPAA guidance for protected health information.
• GDPR obligations around residency, access, and erasure.
• NIST 800-53 and 800-63 for control families and identity assurance.
• ISO 27001 and related information-security standards.
• CMMC requirements for defense-related contractors.
• Export-control considerations for advanced cryptography.

10.1 Right-to-erasure and retention

Encrypted chunks can be removed within specific jurisdictions while QHASH references remain stable for audit purposes. Deletion events are anchored and verifiable, providing evidence that retention policies have been enforced without compromising integrity guarantees for surviving data.

11. Deployment Models

11/11 IPFS supports several deployment topologies to fit different risk profiles and operational realities.

11.1 Public multi-region network

A public, multi-region deployment offers global redundancy and high availability using multiple pinsets and DID registries. This model is suitable for organizations that require resilience and interoperability across borders.

11.2 Private clusters

Hospitals, enterprises, and public-sector agencies can operate private clusters that replicate only within tightly controlled networks. Private clusters still leverage the same QHASH, DID, and PQC foundations as the broader network.

11.3 Hybrid and edge models

Hybrid deployments combine private clusters with selective replication to public pinsets for disaster recovery. Edge-optimized models allow for local IPFS nodes that operate during intermittent connectivity and later reconcile with regional clusters.

12. Integration Patterns

11/11 IPFS can be integrated into new or existing systems through SDKs and HTTP APIs. Typical use cases include:

• Medical record platforms and imaging repositories.
• Secure document vaults and compliance archives.
• Research and scientific data platforms.
• Identity and access systems that require verifiable storage.
• Government registries and long-term record systems.
• Supply chain and provenance tracking solutions.

SDKs for Python, TypeScript, Go, and Rust abstract the complexity of encryption, key management, and residency policy selection, allowing application developers to treat 11/11 IPFS as a secure, policy-aware object store.

13. Threat Model and Security Posture

11/11 IPFS is built for environments where the adversary may be highly resourced, persistent, and capable of long-term data collection.

13.1 Threats addressed

• Quantum-enabled attempts to break classical encryption.
• Insider threats and compromised administrator accounts.
• Regional cloud compromise and outages.
• Unauthorized access through misconfiguration.
• Content tampering or silent corruption.
• Timestamp forgery and audit log manipulation.

13.2 Zero-trust enforcement

No single node, region, or human operator is implicitly trusted. Every control-plane action is signed; every data operation is anchored; every access is conditioned on DID-based proofs and key possession.

14. Roadmap

The core platform establishes a foundation that can be extended with additional capabilities, including:

• Multi-signature DID policies for high-assurance operations.
• More expressive jurisdiction and residency rules.
• Hardware-rooted attestation for storage and gateway nodes.
• Secure compute modules for privacy-preserving processing near the data.
• Interoperability formats for multi-organization data sharing.

Long term, 11/11 IPFS is intended to become a foundational layer for secure medical exchange, enterprise knowledge repositories, identity infrastructure, and public digital records. It is designed to operate across decades of cryptographic and regulatory change.

15. Conclusion

11/11 IPFS represents a significant step forward in secure, compliant, and resilient distributed storage. By combining client-side encryption, post-quantum cryptography, deterministic manifests, decentralized identity, and jurisdiction-aware controls, it provides organizations with a future-ready foundation for long-term data security.

The architecture is explicitly designed for contexts where data must remain confidential for decades, where auditability and integrity are non-negotiable, and where regional law dictates storage behavior. In these environments, traditional centralized storage models and classical cryptography are not enough.

11/11 IPFS is more than a storage system: it is a quantum-secure backbone intended to support the next generation of medical, enterprise, and public digital infrastructure.

This document is a technical overview and does not describe any particular commercial product, service, or financial arrangement. It focuses solely on the storage, security, and architectural properties of the 11/11 IPFS design.