Applied cryptography
Swarm SDK
Encrypted communication for autonomous systems. A software architecture that brings hybrid key exchange, forward secrecy, and mesh routing to devices with changing neighbors and intermittent connections.
The engineering problem
Secure the conversation as the network changes.
A mesh of autonomous devices has to manage more than encryption. Peers join and leave. Messages arrive late or out of order. A transport has its own payload and timing constraints. Identity and key state have to remain coherent through those changes.
The Swarm architecture brings those concerns into one layered design, with the application, cryptographic session, routing, and transport kept distinct.
- Implementation
- Proprietary Python SDK
- Hybrid key exchange
- ML-KEM-768 + X25519
- Session design
- Double Ratchet forward secrecy
- Network integration
- Gossip mesh, MAVLink, UDP
Four layers. One communication path.
The architecture separates the information an application needs to exchange from how a peer establishes trust, protects a message, and carries it across the network.
- Application
- Telemetry and coordination messages enter through a common agent interface.
- Identity & session
- Peer identity, hybrid key establishment, and evolving message keys define the encrypted session.
- Mesh
- Peer discovery, bounded gossip, and duplicate suppression manage message distribution.
- Transport
- MAVLink and UDP adapters carry framed messages, with transport-specific limits handled at the boundary.
The decisions that matter.
Hybrid key establishment
The design combines ML-KEM-768 with X25519 when establishing session material. The post-quantum component and the classical exchange have distinct roles; the combiner, authentication, and implementation all matter to the resulting security.
Keys that evolve with the session
A ratcheting session derives fresh message keys and retires old key material. Forward secrecy depends on correct state management and key deletion, including how the receiver handles delayed messages.
Routing with bounded work
Gossip routing distributes messages through peers. Fanout limits, duplicate suppression, and expiry keep forwarding bounded; partition and recovery behavior need explicit treatment.
A transport boundary
MAVLink integration brings packet size, framing, and reassembly into the design. Keeping transport separate lets an application work against a stable interface while the link underneath it changes.
Project status
A public architecture. A proprietary implementation.
This case study documents the design. The private implementation and its present release state are not independently verifiable from the public materials. No independent security audit, certification, or field qualification is established here.
For an integration discussion, bring the device environment, transport, expected traffic, and failure conditions. Those details define the implementation review and testing the system needs.
Historical engineering notes
These articles record earlier design work. Treat their release details, benchmarks, and compliance statements as historical claims, rather than current product qualification. This page states the scope of the public case study.
Hybrid key exchange & mesh architecture
The original architecture discussion: key establishment, session encryption, and routing.
Session keys & the Double Ratchet
An exploration of message-key evolution and handling out-of-order delivery.
Identity & key lifecycle
Provisioning, rotation, and revocation as parts of the system design.
Gossip routing & network partitions
Bounded forwarding, duplicate suppression, and reconnection behavior.
Underlying specifications
The reference material for the primitives and transport is published by their respective maintainers. Using a standardized primitive does not certify an implementation or the system around it.