9.2 Ghost Serpent
Decoy traffic that buries the pattern of your day.
Cover traffic woven around your real signal so the shape of your communication reveals nothing.
Arrives in a later update, after the messenger.
- Pad ladder 9 buckets
- Ladder span 256 B – 64 KiB
- Decoy payload crypto-random fill
01 / THE COVER — LETTERED
Watch the shape of your day stop being readable.
9.2 / A
Cover woven with real
Ghost Serpent weaves decoy frames around your real signal so activity and silence stop looking different and the rhythm of your day stops being readable from the wire. Cover from your device is built in; cover from the relay is written and follows a relay-side setting, so the two directions are not yet guaranteed to match — matching them is the next step.
- Decoy payload
- Cryptographically random fill — nothing on the wire tells it from ciphertext
- Shaping
- Sized against your recent real traffic
- Direction
- Device sends cover; relay cover follows a relay-side setting until the two are matched
9.2 / B
Nine sizes for every message
Under the cover sits the pad ladder: every text envelope on the messenger socket snaps to one of nine fixed sizes with crypto-random fill, so length testifies to nothing. Photos, clips and voice notes are padded to a block boundary before a single seal, and decoy frames are shaped against your recent real traffic.
- 256 B
- 512 B
- 1 KiB
- 2 KiB
- 4 KiB
- 8 KiB
- 16 KiB
- 32 KiB
- 64 KiB
91
fixed sizes every text envelope snaps to on the messenger socket
9.2 / C
The honest limit
Cover raises the cost of pattern analysis against realistic observers. It does not defeat a truly global passive adversary — no shipped messenger’s cover does, and we say so.
- Claim
- Cost-raising — never “impossible”
- Scope
- Cover on the messenger connection; bulk-transport constant-rate cover is future work
- Cost
- Some battery and data — the honest cost of cover
A shape that testifies to nothing about your day.
02 / THE VERDICT — CATEGORY COLUMNS
Set cover against a bare encrypted connection.
| QERYX Ghost Serpent | Classical E2E | SMS-class | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Real workloads | |||
| Traffic-pattern analysis | Cover + uniform buckets degrade it | Message timing and size exposed | Full call-record patterns |
| Burst activity visible | Buried in cover | Visible spike | Visible spike |
| Message size inference | 9 fixed buckets | Approximate length leaks | Exact length |
| Global passive adversary | Honest no-claim — cost raised | Not included | Not included |
03 / THE HARD QUESTIONS
Ask what cover does not defeat.
What does an observer see?
Sealed envelopes on a ladder of nine sizes, on a connection that is never quiet. Cover breaks the equation "a frame means a message"; it does not erase the arrival times of the frames themselves, and no shipped messenger's cover does.
Does this defeat a global passive adversary?
No claim of that. Cover raises the cost of pattern analysis against realistic observers; a truly global correlator is beyond any shipped messenger’s promise — we say so.
Does decoy traffic cost me battery and data?
Yes, some — that is the honest cost of cover.
Can the server tell decoys from messages?
The relay can — it reads the cover marker and discards the frame on arrival instead of storing it. An observer on the wire sees encrypted frames on one connection and no marker at all; what it can still measure is the length and the arrival time of each one, which is why the sizes snap to a ladder and why we do not claim the two streams are identical.
What can be handed over under subpoena?
Sealed envelopes and routing metadata — with message lengths reduced to nine ladder steps and the connection carrying cover between them.