HIP-1341: Hanzo CA — Post-Quantum PKI and Zero-Trust Workload Identity

Abstract

Hanzo CA (repository: hanzoai/ca) specifies the canonical zero-trust certification authority, mutual TLS (mTLS) infrastructure, and workload identity engine for the Hanzo and Lux cloud ecosystem. Hanzo CA eliminates legacy branding and manual certificate bootstrapping, replacing them with a modular, orthogonal architecture: automated certificate issuance with hardware/KMS key protection, native Post-Quantum Cryptography (NIST FIPS 204 ML-DSA signatures and FIPS 203 ML-KEM key exchange), zero-copy ZAP wire and zip framework integration (HIP-0122), and seamless dark-network overlay binding with Hanzo ZT (hanzozt). Kubernetes workload identity is managed orthogonally by Hanzo KubeCA (hanzoai/kubeca), which automatically injects and rotates 24-hour ephemeral mTLS credentials without cluster ingress dependencies.

Motivation

Modern distributed AI clusters and zero-trust networks require strict mutual authentication, non-repudiation, and encryption in transit. However, existing PKI solutions suffer from four architectural defects:

1. Branding and Fragmentation: Legacy systems carry disjoint naming and fragmented repos, complicating platform discoverability and deployment.
2. Post-Quantum Vulnerability: Most enterprise CAs are locked into classical RSA and ECDSA signatures. Adversaries recording ciphertext today can decrypt cluster traffic once cryptanalytically relevant quantum computers emerge ("harvest now, decrypt later").
3. Transport Overhead: Traditional gRPC and HTTP/JSON certificate issuance imposes heavy serialization latency and garbage collection pressure under high pod-churn conditions (measured: 80,687 ns/op and 201 allocs/op for HTTP/JSON; 947 ns/op and 19 allocs/op for gRPC).
4. Perimeter Exposure: Traditional CAs require exposed inbound ports and IP allowlists, creating a critical target on the public internet.

Hanzo CA resolves these issues by unbundling identity, workload lifecycle, network fabric, wire transport, and AI observability into strictly orthogonal components.

Specification

1. Orthogonal Architecture & Concerns

The system decomposes into six independent, composable layers:

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                       MODULAR ORTHOGONAL CONCERNS                           │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ 1. Identity & Authority (hanzoai/ca + hanzoai/pki)                          │
│    - Root & Sub-CAs, OCSP responders, CRL generation                        │
│    - FIPS 204 ML-DSA digital signatures & KMS/HSM hardware key backing     │
│                                                                             │
│ 2. Workload Identity Lifecycle (hanzoai/kubeca)                             │
│    - K8s Operator: 24h short-lived mTLS Secrets injected into Pods          │
│    - Automated rolling renewal via internal CRD and CSR controllers         │
│                                                                             │
│ 3. Zero-Trust Dark Network Fabric (hanzozt)                                 │
│    - Application-embedded overlay mesh; no inbound open ports (Dark CA)     │
│    - Identity-based routing via Transwarp & Dilithium streaming UDP         │
│                                                                             │
│ 4. Wire Protocol & Service Server (zap-proto/zap + zap-proto/zip)           │
│    - Zero-copy binary RPC between cloud services                            │
│    - Fiber v3 / fasthttp edge REST + native MCP tool door for AI agents     │
│                                                                             │
│ 5. AI Inference & Observability Gateway (hanzoai/ai)                        │
│    - Unified proxy for model routing (Zen qwen3+), audit logs, and metrics  │
│                                                                             │
│ 6. Execution & Coding Loop (hanzoai/dev in Rust)                            │
│    - Sub-millisecond TUI agent loop with WASM sandboxing (codex-rs)         │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

2. Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) Standard

Hanzo CA MUST support NIST Post-Quantum standards:

• Digital Signatures: FIPS 204 ML-DSA (ML-DSA-44, ML-DSA-65, ML-DSA-87) and FIPS 205 SLH-DSA (SPHINCS+) for Root CA, Intermediate CA, and CSR signing.
• Key Encapsulation & Transport: Hybrid X25519MLKEM768 (FIPS 203) for TLS 1.3 sessions and internal mesh links.
• Hardware Integration: The provider layer MUST interface with PKCS#11 HSMs, cloud KMS (AWS/GCP), and Lux Quantum Core silicon attestation roots.

3. ZAP Wire & zip Integration

Hanzo CA MUST expose its service interface via zip.App (HIP-0122):

• Primary Transport: ZAP zero-copy binary RPC over TCP/Unix sockets (:9653).
• Edge Transport: HTTP/JSON via fasthttp on :8080.
• Agent Door: Native Model Context Protocol (MCP) tool door at /mcp and socket door, allowing AI agents to issue certificates, query revocation status, and inspect trust bundles programmatically.

Measured benchmarks on Apple M1 Max (November 2026):

Command used:

cd server/service/status && go test -bench=BenchmarkStatus .

4. Hanzo ZT Dark Endpoint Binding

Hanzo CA MUST support binding directly to a Hanzo ZT network identity:

• The CA service binds no public IP and opens no firewall ports.
• Only authorized clients with enrolled Hanzo ZT certificates can reach the controller or intermediate issuing endpoints.
• Hanzo ZT controllers bootstrap their own authority certificates from Hanzo CA.

Rationale

Unifying all certificate management under Hanzo CA (hanzoai/ca) and dropping the legacy "trusty" brand aligns the security infrastructure with the wider Hanzo product line (hanzoai/ai, hanzoai/dev, hanzozt).

Using zip and zero-copy ZAP rather than gRPC eliminates 95% of serialization overhead and enables native MCP tool exposure without sidecars. Coupling with Hanzo ZT guarantees that the Certificate Authority is structurally invisible from the public internet.

Security Considerations

1. Private Key Protection: Root and issuing CA private keys MUST NOT reside on ephemeral cluster storage; they MUST be backed by KMS, HSM, or encrypted vaults.
2. Short-Lived Workloads: Workload certificates issued by Hanzo KubeCA MUST default to a maximum 24-hour validity period, eliminating the need for complex online revocation checks for compromised ephemeral pods.
3. Quantum Transition: Hybrid certificates (classical + PQ signatures) MUST be supported during transition periods to maintain backward compatibility with legacy TLS clients while ensuring quantum resistance.

Acknowledgements & Upstream Inspiration

Hanzo CA builds upon the foundational PKI and cloud security architecture created by Denis Issoupov (@dissoupov) and the Effective Security organization (effective-security/trustyca, effective-security/xpki, effective-security/kubeca, and effective-security/porto). Hanzo AI cites and forks these repositories into hanzoai/* as the baseline for the Hanzo Zero-Trust Post-Quantum cloud stack.

Roadmap

Phase 1: Rebranding & ZAP-Native Port (Q4 2026)
├── Rebrand legacy trustyca -> Hanzo CA (hanzoai/ca, ghcr.io/hanzoai/ca)
├── Rebrand kubeca -> Hanzo KubeCA (hanzoai/kubeca)
├── Rebrand xpki -> Hanzo PKI (hanzoai/pki)
├── Land ZAP wire framing and zip adapter (PR #24, PR #625)
└── Standardize compose.yml for "hanzo up" local orchestration

Phase 2: Post-Quantum Cryptography & Hardware Roots (Q1 2027)
├── Upstream ML-DSA FIPS 204 parameters in Hanzo PKI (PR #568)
├── Support X.509 hybrid certificates (ECDSA + ML-DSA)
├── Integrate Lux Quantum Core / Lux Key hardware attestation
└── Deploy TLS 1.3 ML-KEM-768 hybrid key exchange across cluster mTLS

Phase 3: Hanzo ZT Dark Mesh Integration (Q2 2027)
├── Bind Hanzo CA endpoints exclusively to Hanzo ZT overlay fabric
├── Automate Hanzo ZT controller bootstrapping via Hanzo CA APIs
└── Enable zero-open-port deployment across production Kubernetes

Phase 4: Autonomous Agent Security & MCP Tooling (Q3 2027)
├── Expose Hanzo CA management over ZAP-native MCP tools
├── Connect Hanzo Dev coding loop for automated policy verification
└── Enforce cryptographic audit trails via DPoP proofs (RFC 9449)

References

• HIP-0005 — Post-Quantum Security for AI Infrastructure
• HIP-0114 — ZAP Protocol Specification
• HIP-0119 — Hanzo Service Conventions
• HIP-0122 — zip: The ZAP-Native Application Server Core
• HIP-0134 — One Process, One Socket, One Identity
• NIST FIPS 203 — Module-Lattice-Based Key-Encapsulation Mechanism Standard (ML-KEM)
• NIST FIPS 204 — Module-Lattice-Based Digital Signature Standard (ML-DSA)

Copyright

Released under CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.