nebula/docs/pq-handshake.md

Post-quantum handshakes

Status: draft. Decisions below were made on 2026-10-13 (phase 1) and 2026-10-14 (phase 2); open items are listed at the end. Both phases are implemented (see phase 1 and phase 2).

Goals

1. Confidentiality against harvest-now-decrypt-later. Traffic recorded today must stay secret after a cryptographically relevant quantum computer exists. This needs a post-quantum key exchange now.
2. Post-quantum authentication, later. Needs certificates whose CA signature and host keys are post-quantum. This requires reissuing certificates, so it ships second.
3. Never rely on IP fragmentation. ML-KEM and ML-DSA do not fit in one packet, so the handshake must carry messages larger than the path MTU itself.

Non-goals: identity hiding beyond what IX offers today, and signatures at handshake time. The only signature in the system stays the CA signature inside the certificate.

Primitives and sizes

Primitive	Size
ML-KEM-1024 encapsulation key	1568 B
ML-KEM-1024 ciphertext	1568 B
ML-DSA-87 public key / signature	2592 B / 4627 B
Today's IX msg1 / msg2 (v2 cert, 151 B)	252 B / 287 B

crypto/mlkem is available in Go 1.26; crypto/mldsa arrives in Go 1.27, which go.mod requires since phase 2.

Phase 1: ephemeral ML-KEM on today's certificates

A new handshake subtype, ix_psk2_mlkem1024 (2), IX-shaped (2 messages; the responder completes on msg1 as today), using the flynn/noise psk2 modifier. The Noise protocol name becomes Noise_IXpsk2_..., which separates it from the classical subtype.

• msg1: the initiator generates a fresh ML-KEM-1024 key pair and places the encapsulation key in NebulaHandshakeDetails.KEMKey (field 9). msg1's payload is mixed into the Noise transcript, so it cannot be stripped or replaced without msg2 failing. With the psk modifier Noise also mixes e into the cipher key, so msg1's static key and payload are encrypted, though only under a key derived from the public ephemeral.
• Responder: after ReadMessage(msg1) it encapsulates to that key, obtaining (ct, ss), and calls HandshakeState.SetPresharedKey(psk) before writing msg2, with psk = HKDF-Extract(SHA-256, salt = "nebula ix_psk2_mlkem1024 v1", ikm = ss || ct). The ciphertext is bound in because, unlike the encapsulation key, it is not part of the Noise transcript.
• msg2 on the wire is ct || noise_msg2. The ciphertext travels outside the Noise message because the initiator needs ss before processing msg2's psk token. Any change to ct yields a different ss (ML-KEM implicit rejection) and the handshake fails.

Transport keys depend on both the X25519 DH outputs and the ML-KEM shared secret. Authentication is unchanged and classical. With a minimal v2 certificate msg1 and msg2 are about 1.84 KB each, so each travels as 2 data and 2 repair fragments of about 936 bytes. A KEM key on the classical subtype, or a missing or malformed one on this subtype, is a fatal protocol error; a forged ciphertext only fails that packet.

The psk token is the last in msg2, so the responder's static key s is encrypted under ee and se only, and a future quantum attacker can read it from a recording; the certificate and indexes follow the psk and stay protected. Identity hiding is a non-goal, and phase 2's KEM-first ordering closes this anyway.

Phase 2: hybrid IX with certificate v3

Phase 2 adds post-quantum authentication. Decisions were made on 2026-10-14; it is implemented on the pq-identity branch (see Implementation).

Certificate v3

A version 3 certificate is a version 2 certificate extended with post-quantum keys. It is its own format, with its own PEM banner (NEBULA CERTIFICATE V3) and a strict parser, but its first fields are exactly the fields of a v2 certificate:

CertificateV3 ::= SEQUENCE {
    details      [0] Details,        -- v2 details, unchanged
    curve        [1] Curve DEFAULT curve25519,
    publicKey    [2] OCTET STRING,   -- classical: X25519 / P256 for hosts, Ed25519 / ECDSA P256 for CAs
    signature    [3] OCTET STRING,   -- classical CA signature over details || curve || publicKey, as in v2
    pqSuite      [4] OCTET STRING,   -- one byte, the PQSuite; always present
    pqPublicKey  [5] OCTET STRING,   -- the suite's KEM public key for hosts, its signature public key for CAs
    pqSignature  [6] OCTET STRING    -- the suite's signature by the issuing CA, context "nebula certificate v3",
                                     -- over the DER of fields 0 to 5, curve always present
}

• The suite. pqSuite names the post-quantum algorithms the way curve names the classical ones: the KEM of host keys, and the signature algorithm of CA keys and of the certificates a CA signs. A CA and every certificate it signs share a suite, as they share a curve; the CA pool rejects a mismatch, and the post-quantum signature covers the suite, so a certificate can not be relabelled. The field is always present, in handshakes too, with no default, and 0 is never valid. There is one suite today, MLKEM1024_MLDSA87 (1): ML-KEM-1024 hosts, ML-DSA-87 CAs. A new suite is an entry in the cert package's suite table plus, for a new KEM, a hybrid subtype; no new certificate version. Changing a CA's suite means a new CA, or a new v3 extension of its v2 form that replaces the old one, since one v2 CA has one v3 extension.

• The v2 form. Fields 0 to 3 are a byte exact v2 certificate, signed by the v2 form of the CA. A v3 holder presents it in classical and phase 1 handshakes, so peers that only speak v2 accept it as they always have, and old parsers never see v3 bytes. A node therefore needs one certificate, not a v2 and v3 pair.

• Signatures. Both must verify. The ML-DSA-87 signature covers the classical signature too, so neither signature can be swapped out (which also makes P256 low/high-s alternates moot for v3). If ML-DSA fell classically and someone swapped pqPublicKey, the hybrid handshake still needs the classical static key, which only the classical signature covers. The ML-DSA-87 signature is deterministic (FIPS 204 section 3.4), so extending the same v2 certificate with the same key twice gives the same v3 certificate and fingerprint: pq-extend is idempotent. The hedged variant guards signers an attacker can fault physically, which a CA key in a file is not, and the Ed25519 signature beside it is deterministic too.

• Issuer and fingerprints. The details are v2-shaped, so the issuer is the fingerprint of the CA's v2 form. A v3 certificate's own fingerprint is the SHA-256 of its whole encoding and differs from its v2 form's. Both identify it. To block a v3 certificate, block its v2 fingerprint: the pool checks it for the v3 certificate and for its v2 form alike, so one entry covers both forms, while blocking only the v3 fingerprint leaves the v2 form usable in classical handshakes. nebula-cert print leads with both fingerprints and says which one to block. Firewall ca_sha rules match a v3 peer by either fingerprint of its CA.

• CA pool. A v3 CA verifies only v3 certificates. To accept v2 certificates as well the pool must also list the CA's v2 form. Dropping the v2 form is how a node requires post-quantum authentication; there is no separate setting. Two different v3 extensions of one v2 CA are rejected as ambiguous.

• Keys are composite, classical followed by post-quantum, wherever a v3 certificate deals in them: PublicKey() returns classical || pq, and private keys are classical || seed (64 byte ML-KEM seed for hosts, 32 byte ML-DSA seed for CAs), in one PEM block in pki.key with banners such as NEBULA X25519 MLKEM1024 PRIVATE KEY and NEBULA ED25519 MLDSA87 PRIVATE KEY. The banner names the post-quantum algorithm, not the suite, because a seed's size does not tell the algorithm's strength.

• Both curves. Curve25519 and P256; the post-quantum half does not depend on the curve.

• In-place upgrade. nebula-cert pq-extend turns an existing v2 CA into a v3 CA whose v2 form is the old CA certificate, byte for byte, and extends existing host certificates the same way. Fingerprints, blocklists and trust in the v2 forms carry over unchanged. Hosts get their ML-KEM key with nebula-cert keygen -in-key, which keeps the classical key.

Certificate	Full	In a handshake	v2 form
CA, Curve25519	7365 B	n/a	134 B
Host, Curve25519	6378 B	4772 B	171 B

crypto/mldsa is new in Go 1.27, so go.mod moves to Go 1.27.

Handshake

A new subtype, ix_hybrid_mlkem1024 (3), runs HandshakeHybridIX from github.com/DefinedNet/noise (its PQ_RESEARCH.md gives the design rationale and security argument), with ML-KEM-1024 supplied by nebula:

-> e, s
<- ekem, skem, e, ee, se, s, es
-> skem

• e and s carry composite keys, X25519 (or P256) followed by ML-KEM-1024. DH tokens use the classical halves, ekem and skem encapsulate to the ML-KEM halves, and every secret goes into the one chaining key.
• The responder's e is classical only. It follows the responder's ekem, which already completed the ephemeral KEM exchange, so it carries only the X25519 (or P256) key that ee and se need. A second ephemeral KEM exchange would add nothing: one ekem is lost only if the initiator's ephemeral private key or the responder's encapsulation randomness is, and a reverse one would be lost in the same cases. PQNoise's pqIX has no responder e at all. The static ML-KEM key is the post-quantum half of the certificate's public key, so it travels in s and the handshake form of the certificate leaves out both keys.
• KEM tokens first. msg2 starts with ekem, skem, so the responder's static key and certificate are encrypted under keys that already include both KEM secrets: the responder's identity is protected against harvest-now-decrypt-later, as TLS 1.3 with X25519MLKEM768 protects the server certificate. (OpenSSH offers no comparison: its hybrid key exchange sends the host key in the clear.) The initiator's certificate travels in msg1 in the clear, as in IX today.
• Authentication. The responder authenticates the initiator when msg3 decrypts (it depends on msg2's skem to the initiator's static key); the initiator authenticates the responder when the first packet under the new keys decrypts (it depends on msg3's skem). Neither side needs a signature. Knowing only a peer's classical private key gets an impersonator nowhere: as an initiator it cannot read msg2, as a responder it cannot read msg3.
• The two static ML-KEM keys see different ciphertexts. msg2's skem ciphertext is encrypted under a key derived from the ekem secret, which whoever sent msg2 chose, so anyone who can address a pending initiator's index can have the initiator decapsulate a ciphertext of their choosing with its static key. That is the IND-CCA setting ML-KEM is designed for, and crypto/mlkem is constant time. The responder decrypts msg3's skem ciphertext under the keys of a completed msg2 before decapsulating, so it only ever decapsulates ciphertexts the genuine initiator sealed.
• v3 certificates go with this subtype and nothing else: a v3 certificate on any other subtype, or a v2 one on this one, is a protocol error.
• One subtype per KEM. A hybrid subtype names its KEM, and a v3 holder initiates the subtype of its suite's KEM. Peers need the same KEM, not the same suite: suites that differ only in their signature algorithm share a subtype, and each certificate carries its own suite. A responder whose suite uses another KEM drops msg1, so the pair behaves as if the responder did not speak PQ: classical fallback, or no tunnel under require. A suite's KEM must have a subtype for the pki to load a certificate in it.

Message	Size (Curve25519)	Data fragments (k)
msg1	8009 B	7
msg2	9628 B	9
msg3	1616 B	2

Dependency. DefinedNet/noise is a private repository today. go.mod points at a local clone with a replace directive; the module has to be published (or the hybrid patterns upstreamed to flynn/noise) before this can merge.

Three messages in the manager

• Responder. After msg2 the responder keeps the handshake pending under its local index, the multi-message responder the manager lacked before. A repeated msg1 maps to it through the answered-msg1 cache and gets msg2 resent with fresh symbols, as in phase 1. msg3's fragments name the responder's index, so they reach the pending entry and never the pre-authentication table; its reassembly is capped at 4 KiB. Until msg3 verifies, data for that index is dropped quietly: a RecvError would tear down the initiator's new tunnel. On completing, the responder sends an empty Test/TestReply under the new keys so the initiator hears back without traffic. A pending responder expires after the handshake timeout.
• Initiator. Writing msg3 yields the transport keys, so the tunnel goes live at once, readable only by the real responder; msg3 goes out before any packets cached during the handshake. Until anything from the responder decrypts on the new tunnel, msg3 is resent with fresh symbols on a linear backoff, and if nothing has decrypted by the handshake timeout the tunnel is closed. Losing msg3 costs the data sent right behind it, which the overlay retransmits.
• Lost confirmation. A msg3 fragment for a v3 tunnel the responder already completed means the initiator is still waiting, so the responder confirms again, at most once per retry interval and only to the tunnel's own remote, never to the fragment's source.
• Crossing attempts. The initiator's classical attempt can reach the responder, which completes it at once, while the hybrid handshake still waits for msg3. If the initiator got the hybrid msg2 first it has committed to hybrid and sends msg3, so the responder takes the hybrid tunnel even though the classical one is newer, rather than rejecting it as too old.
• A failed attempt. A post-quantum attempt can fail fatally where the classical one would not, for example a v3 certificate from a CA the initiator trusts only in its v2 form. The failed attempt is dropped and the handshake continues classical. With require the handshake ends.

Rollout with v3

• A node with a v3 certificate initiates hybrid handshakes in place of phase 1 ones, alternating with classical as before. It never initiates phase 1, but still answers phase 1 handshakes with its v2 form, so a peer with only a v2 certificate gets a classical tunnel from it.
• A responder without a v3 certificate drops hybrid msg1s before reassembly.
• handshakes.pq.require with a v3 certificate means hybrid only, in both directions: phase 1 msg1s are dropped too, so every peer needs a v3 certificate.
• Post-quantum authentication is required through the CA pool, by not listing the CA's v2 form. A sticky or require initiator resists active downgrade of the key exchange; only the CA pool resists downgrade of authentication, since a quantum attacker could forge a v2 form.
• sticky stays off by default for v3 holders too (decided 2026-10-14): a peer re-issued back to a v2-only certificate would otherwise be unreachable until this process restarts. Deployments that want downgrade resistance turn on sticky or require, or drop the CA's v2 form from the pool.

Fragment transport

Requirements

• No IP fragmentation: every datagram's UDP payload is at most 1232 bytes after relay wrapping (16 B header + 16 B tag), the IPv6 minimum MTU budget also used by DNS Flag Day 2020 and Solana's Turbine.
• Every fragment of a handshake uses the same 5-tuple.
• Bounded pre-authentication state, bounded amplification, selective loss recovery, tolerance of reordering and duplication, and a strictly validated, fuzzable parser.

Wire format

Every packet of a fragmented handshake subtype is:

Nebula header (16)   Version | Type=Handshake | Subtype | Reserved=0 | RemoteIndex | Counter
Fragment header (8)  FragID u32 | MsgLen u16 | Index u8 | Flags u8
Cookie (16)          only when Flags has 0x01
Symbol               SymbolSize bytes

• Counter is the Noise message number (1, 2, 3). RemoteIndex is 0 for msg1, as today.
• FragID is the sender's local index (random, non-zero).
• MsgLen is the length of the whole message. Both ends derive the layout from it: K = ceil(MsgLen / 1160), SymbolSize = ceil(MsgLen / K). Every symbol has the same size. Room for a cookie is always reserved, so a packet is at most 16 + 8 + 16 + 1160 = 1200 bytes with or without one.
• Index < K is a data symbol (a slice of the message, the last one zero padded); Index >= K is a repair symbol.
• Flags bit 0x01 means a cookie follows the fragment header. Other bits must be zero.

A cookie reply, sent by a responder under load, is a bare 32 byte packet:

Nebula header (16)   Version | Type=Handshake | Subtype | Reserved=0 | RemoteIndex=FragID | Counter=0
Cookie (16)

It names the initiator's FragID, so the initiator finds its attempt the same way it finds msg2.

Forward error correction

Messages are protected with a systematic Reed-Solomon code over GF(2^8), implemented in handshake/fec:

• The repair rows form a Cauchy matrix, coefficient(row, col) = 1 / (row XOR col) with row >= K > col, so every square submatrix is invertible and any K distinct symbols reconstruct the message. Naive identity-over-Vandermonde constructions are not MDS (the PAR1 flaw and the 1997 Plank tutorial erratum).
• A repair row depends only on its index, so repair symbols are generated on demand and their indexes never need to be agreed in advance. Up to 256 symbols exist per message.
• Known-answer vectors in fec_test.go pin the encoding and were cross-checked against an independent implementation; changing them is a wire format change.
• Cost for a 9.8 KB message (k=9): about 13 µs for three repair symbols, about 19 µs to decode with three data symbols missing.

The sender chooses m, the number of repair symbols per attempt. The receiver only needs any K symbols, so this is policy and can change without a protocol change. The starting rule is m = max(2, ceil(K/3)).

Retries send fresh symbols. Attempt 0 sends indexes 0 .. K+m-1; each retry sends the next K+m unused indexes. The receiver merges all distinct symbols across attempts, so no received fragment is wasted. Indexes are a deterministic function of the message, so retransmits stay idempotent: the responder caches msg2 itself and regenerates any symbol.

Repair symbols trail the data. Data symbols go out back to back; repair symbols follow after a short delay, so a queue tail-drop at the end of the data run does not also take the repair. In simulation this lifts small messages substantially (k=2 at 10% loss, burst 8: 91.4% to 98.2% first-attempt success). Pacing every fragment was also evaluated; it gains about 5 more points for k=7..9 on bursty paths, which is not worth the extra machinery, and the retry with fresh symbols covers the remainder.

Receiver rules

Implemented in handshake/fragment (Sender, Assembly, and the capped Table).

• Fragments are stored individually as they arrive and charged against a memory cap. Nothing is allocated from a claimed size alone (FragmentSmack, game-engine "fragment bombs").
• MsgLen must be identical for every fragment of a FragID; a mismatch drops the whole entry. msg1 is capped at MsgLen <= 16384 (K <= 15).
• The decoder keeps at most K distinct symbols, so an entry never exceeds about MsgLen bytes however many repair symbols arrive.
• When K symbols are present the message is decoded and handed to the handshake Machine as a synthetic [header | message]. The Machine never sees fragments.
• A completed message the responder answered is remembered without its symbols, outside the memory and per-source caps, for the idle timeout: which symbol indexes it has seen, and its hash. Fragments still trailing the attempt that completed it are counted and dropped. Once as many new symbols as it has data symbols arrive, which only a retry offers, it is reported as a repeat and the cached response is resent. Without this, the repair fragments trailing a msg1 whose data fragments already completed it open an entry that for K above the repair count can never complete, and back to back handshakes from one source run into its quota (seen on real hosts: the fifth hybrid handshake within 3 s fell back to classical). A message that decoded but was not answered is forgotten, and the next attempt rebuilds it.
• If Noise rejects a decoded message, the entry is discarded and the next attempt supplies fresh symbols. (Possible refinement: keep a few spare symbols so an injected bad symbol can be identified by re-encoding instead of waiting for a retry.)
• Pre-authentication msg1 entries live in a table keyed by (source address or relay index, FragID) with a total memory cap, per-source quotas (/32 for IPv4, /64 for IPv6), a sliding TTL of about 2 s refreshed by progress, and random eviction under pressure. msg2 and msg3 reassembly attaches to the existing pending handshake found by RemoteIndex. The initiator keeps two msg2 slots keyed by the responder's FragID, each capped at 16 KiB. When a stale lighthouse address for the peer belongs to another host now, both hosts answer the same msg1, and their interleaved bursts would wipe each other out of a single slot that emptied on every FragID change; with a slot each, whichever completes first is processed, and a wrong host's answer takes the usual block-and-retry path. The responder's msg3 slot needs no such care: it checks FragID against the initiator's index it learned from msg2.

Retransmission and amplification

• Only timers cause transmission. Reactive resends (the responder resending its cached msg2 when a duplicate msg1 completes) are rate limited to one per handshake per retry interval, to avoid TFTP's Sorcerer's Apprentice amplification.
• Duplicate msg1 detection compares the decoded message to the cached one before running Noise or certificate verification.
• Before an address is validated, a responder sends at most 3x the bytes it received from it (QUIC's rule). Normal handshakes sit near 1.1-1.2x.
• In phase 2 the initiator retransmits msg3 until any authenticated packet arrives from the responder; the responder sends a small confirmation on completion and drops tunnel traffic until msg3 verifies.

Denial of service

The responder can no longer complete statelessly on msg1, since msg1 arrives in pieces. Defenses are the capped table above plus a cookie under load, in the style of WireGuard's mac2, QUIC Retry and the SCTP state cookie:

• Once the msg1 table is at least half full (by bytes or by entries), every msg1 fragment must carry a valid cookie. One without is answered with a cookie reply and leaves no state. Fragments that already belong to an entry need one too, so an attacker cannot hold old entries open.
• A cookie is HMAC-SHA256(secret, source address and port, relay channel, FragID) truncated to 16 bytes. The secret rotates every 2 minutes and the previous one is still accepted, so a cookie is good for 2 to 4 minutes.
• Replies are never larger than the packet that prompted them (no amplification) and are rate limited as a whole (a burst of 256, then 1000 per second), so spoofed floods cannot turn the responder into a reflector.
• The initiator attaches the cookie to its PQ attempt, so every later packet carries it, and immediately resends fresh symbols to the address the reply came from, at most once per retry interval. Under load a PQ handshake costs one extra round trip, which in practice still beats the classical attempt on the next retry tick.
• An attacker on the path can forge a cookie reply; the bogus cookie is simply rejected and answered with a real one.

A CA-keyed pre-filter MAC was considered and rejected: networks commonly trust many CAs.

Pending hybrid responders

A hybrid responder that answered msg1 keeps a pending entry, keyed by its local index, until msg3 arrives or the handshake timeout (5.5 s by default) passes. msg1 is cleartext and nothing covers e or Time, so from one captured v3 msg1 an attacker can mint distinct valid msg1s with a fresh e and a bumped Time. Each misses the answered-msg1 cache, costs the responder the whole msg1 (two signature verifications, two encapsulations, four DH operations, the certificate checks) and a pending entry, and the fragment table stays near empty because a complete burst arrives together, so cookies are never demanded and spoofed sources work. Pending entries are not bounded per peer or in total. Accepted as is (2026-10-14): the per-msg1 work is the same class as classical IX's pre-authentication cost, the expiry bounds the state in time and the fragment table bounds bytes in flight. If it needs tightening, cap pending responders per certificate fingerprint and in total, and count them toward the cookie threshold.

Injected symbols

The decoder keeps the first K distinct symbols it sees, so one forged symbol in those K spoils that attempt's decode; Noise rejects the result and the next attempt brings fresh symbols. Forging one needs the attempt's FragID or index, which are random 32 bit values, and for msg1 the initiator's exact address and port too, so in practice only an attacker who sees the traffic can do it. An attacker who can also drop packets gains nothing new. One who can only inject, and races a forged symbol into every attempt, can stop a PQ handshake where it could not stop a classical one, since classical msg2s are tried one packet at a time. Keeping spare symbols to find a consistent subset only raises the number of forgeries needed per attempt, and authenticating symbols is impossible for msg1, which travels before any key exists. So the decoder deliberately does neither. A non-sticky initiator still gets a classical tunnel from its next attempt; a sticky one, by design, does not downgrade.

Rollout

• Separate settings for initiating and accepting PQ handshakes, both off by default: handshakes.pq.initiate, handshakes.pq.accept. handshakes.pq.repair_delay (default 10ms) sets how long repair fragments trail the data fragments.
• handshakes.pq.require makes every handshake PQ: it implies initiate and accept, never offers a classical attempt, and drops classical msg1s.
• Old nodes silently drop unknown subtypes, so discovery is speculative: an initiator with initiate enabled alternates PQ and classical attempts on successive timer retries, keeping both pending, and the first to complete wins. A path nothing has been sent over yet gets the PQ attempt first: an early resend triggered by a lighthouse reply is PQ, and a relay that comes up pushes the PQ attempt through at once, counting as the PQ turn. Without that, relays set up during the first attempt handed every relayed handshake to the classical retry (seen on real hosts: 11 of 11). Once a msg2 fragment or cookie reply arrives for the PQ attempt the peer evidently speaks PQ, and classical stops getting turns.
• All handshakes.pq settings reload without a restart. Handshakes in flight carry on; the new settings apply to the next attempt and the next packet.
• handshakes.pq.sticky (default off): once a peer has completed a PQ handshake, never fall back to classical for it again during this process lifetime. This resists active downgrade after first contact.
• No lighthouse capability advertisement.

Simulation results

Gilbert-Elliott channel (bad state drops everything), losses expressed as average rate and mean burst length in packets. First-attempt success for the whole handshake with m = max(2, ceil(K/3)) and repair delayed 16 packet slots, compared with no FEC:

Handshake	Loss	Burst 1	Burst 2	Burst 4	Burst 8
phase 1 (2, 2) no FEC	5%	81.4%	85.6%	87.9%	89.0%
phase 1 (2, 2) FEC	5%	99.9%	99.4%	99.3%	98.6%
phase 1 (2, 2) FEC	10%	99.3%	97.5%	97.4%	96.3%
phase 2 (7, 9, 2) no FEC	5%	39.8%	57.5%	70.4%	77.7%
phase 2 (7, 9, 2) FEC	5%	99.6%	94.2%	90.4%	88.8%
phase 2 (7, 9, 2) FEC	10%	95.9%	84.6%	79.0%	77.3%

With fresh repair symbols, phase 2 completes within two attempts at least 99.1% of the time in every scenario above, and within three at least 99.99%.

Prior art

• WireGuard / Rosenpass: fit every message in one packet; cookies and biscuits for statelessness. Not possible at our sizes.
• IKEv2: RFC 7383 fragments only after keys exist, with each fragment authenticated; RFC 9242/9370 move PQ key exchange into intermediate exchanges for that reason.
• QUIC / DTLS 1.3: offset-based reassembly with ACKs; QUIC's 3x amplification limit and 1200-byte floor.
• Solana Turbine: Reed-Solomon over 1232-byte UDP packets through untrusted relays; moved to Merkle-authenticated shreds after unauthenticated repair symbols enabled poisoning.
• kcp-go, UDPspeeder, CM256: RS FEC over UDP; parity must scale up for small groups.
• gQUIC FEC (removed): FEC does not pay for bulk transfer under bursty loss; it does for short, latency-critical transfers such as handshakes.
• TFTP, NFS duplicate request cache, memcached UDP, IP reassembly bugs: retransmit storms, ID-wrap misassembly, reflection amplification, and allocation from claimed sizes.

Implementation (phase 1)

• handshake: the ix_psk2_mlkem1024 subtype (patterns.go, kem.go), the KEMKey payload field, and the psk2 plumbing in Machine.
• handshake/fec, handshake/fragment: the code and the fragment transport.
• handshake_manager_pq.go and the manager:
  • Initiator. Attempts alternate PQ and classical, starting with PQ (sticky peers get only PQ). The PQ attempt has its own local index registered alongside the classical one; whichever response completes first wins, and the other index is released (settleIndex). A timed out or deleted pending handshake releases both.
  • Responder. msg1 fragments go into the capped pre-authentication table. A decoded msg1 is looked up by hash among recently answered ones before any Noise, KEM or certificate work: the trailing repair fragments of an attempt rebuild a msg1 its data fragments already completed, and a retrying initiator offers fresh symbols for the same msg1. A repeat goes straight to the cached-response resend, which offers fresh msg2 symbols, is rate limited to one per retry interval and is held to the 3x amplification budget.
  • Relays carry fragments unchanged; repair fragments trail via a timer.
• The pre-authentication table is capped at 4 MiB, 1024 entries, 4 per source (IPv4 /32, IPv6 /64, or relay channel), 16 KiB messages and a 3 s idle timeout. Cookies are demanded from half full.
• Tests: Noise-level KEM tests, codec and fragment tests and fuzzers, manager unit tests for the response budget and rate limit, and e2e tests for a clean handshake, loss of data fragments in both directions, fallback to a peer that does not accept PQ, a lost msg2 recovered by fresh symbols, sticky mode under an attacker dropping PQ packets, relays, index cleanup on completion, fallback and timeout, and a responder flooded from spoofed sources demanding and accepting a cookie. Unit tests cover cookie binding and rotation, the never-amplify rule, the initiator's rate limited resend, and reload. ML-KEM and HKDF also pass under GOEXPERIMENT=boringcrypto and GODEBUG=fips140=on.

Implementation (phase 2)

• cert: cert_v3.go (format, V2Form, ExtendToV3, SignPQ), pq_suite.go (PQSuite and the suite table), SignHybridWith and the composite Sign path, the CA pool's v3 index, suite check and v2-form blocklisting, and the composite key PEM banners, generated per suite.
• handshake: the ix_hybrid_mlkem1024 subtype on noise.HandshakeHybridIX, KEMMLKEM1024, HybridSubtype mapping a suite to the subtype of its KEM, composite credentials, cipher states ordered by role for three message patterns, and Machine.PeerCert for a responder that has to act before completion.
• pki.go loads a v3 certificate with its composite key and derives the v2 form; messages after the handshake treat v3 tunnels as v2 (protocolVersion).
• handshake_manager_hybrid.go: pending responders, confirmation and reconfirmation, and the initiator's msg3 resends and teardown; outside.go keeps quiet about pending responder indexes.
• nebula-cert: ca, keygen and sign take -version 3, keygen -in-key extends an existing host key, sign -version 2 with a v3 CA signs as its v2 form, and pq-extend upgrades v2 certificates in place, keeping an encrypted CA key encrypted. ca, keygen and pq-extend of a CA take -pq-suite; sign and pq-extend of a host take the CA's suite.
• Tests: certificate format, strictness, tampering, pool and blocklist rules and in-place extension on both curves; Machine-level hybrid handshakes including corrupted msg3 and impersonation with only the classical key; e2e tests for a clean hybrid handshake, a lost confirmation, a never confirmed handshake (no RecvErrors, teardown, expiry), a v2-only peer, an initiator that trusts only the v2 form, require both ways, and relays; pki loading; firewall ca_sha; and the nebula-cert flows.

Open items

• Publish DefinedNet/noise and drop the replace in go.mod, once Nate says the fork is ready to ship. The classical-only responder e is on the local clone's drop-responder-ekem-key branch (b4a892b), not yet in DefinedNet/noise.
• DefinedNet/noise ReadMessage returns ErrShortMessage without rolling back the symmetric state (DefinedNet/noise#2, inherited from flynn/noise). A message that fails a length check after a key-mixing token leaves ck and h advanced, so the genuine message can never be read: one spoofed short packet to a pending initiator's index, which msg1 carries in the clear in every IX variant, kills that attempt until it times out, and the Machine reports it as recoverable. Blocks publishing the module; the fix is a deferred rollback that also restores k, n and hasK. Smaller pre-publish items are in DefinedNet/noise#3.
• The initiator's first classical retry can fire 0-100 ms after the post-quantum attempt, so at real round-trip times it often crosses it. For hybrid, msg3 settles which tunnel the responder keeps, but the crossing classical tunnel lingers on the responder until it is found dead. The ephemeral-KEM handshake has no msg3: the responder keeps the newer classical tunnel while the initiator keeps the KEM one, and replies go to a released index (field test: 5 of 100 first pings failed at 50 ms round trip, no loss). Options: no classical turn until one retry interval after the post-quantum attempt, and/or complete a losing attempt's late msg2 only to send it a CloseTunnel.

Field tested on real hosts on 2026-10-14 (pq-lab/2026-10-14-hybrid/, untracked): LAN median 3.2 ms against 1.4 ms classical, +2.0 ms at 50 ms round trip, no fallbacks with require under loss.

The cryptographic review of 2026-10-14 found no break in the composition or the certificate chain. Its outcomes are folded in above: deterministic ML-DSA signing, the fingerprint guidance, the skem oracle note, the psk2 note, the pending-responder exposure and the sticky default.

Accepted as is: a tunnel that came up classical between two v3 holders (say, the hybrid attempt was dropped) stays classical until it rehandshakes for another reason. require, sticky and a CA pool without v2 forms cover deployments that need more. PKCS#11 keys do not support v3.