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PostQuantum.Configuration

Secure-by-default encryption for sensitive configuration — connection strings, API keys, and whole appsettings sections — for .NET 8, 9, and 10.

License: MIT Target

Status: 0.2.0-preview.1. The API and token format may change before 1.0. Not independently audited. See Security posture, SECURITY.md, and KNOWN-GAPS.md — we would rather under-claim than overstate.

New in 0.2: an optional hybrid post-quantum key-wrapping provider (ML-KEM-768 + ECDH P-256), a zeroable Secret return type, re-seal helpers for rotation, and the pqc-config CLI.

Table of contents

Why this library exists

Secrets end up in configuration. Connection strings, third-party API keys, signing secrets, SMTP passwords — they live in appsettings.json, environment variables, and config servers, and they leak the same way every time: a repo goes public, a backup is over-shared, a log line prints a section, a laptop is lost.

The standard .NET answer is IDataProtection (great, but DPAPI / ASP.NET-keyring shaped and classical-only) or "put it in a vault" (correct, but not every value justifies a Key Vault round-trip, and you still want defence in depth for what does land on disk). What's missing is a small, honest, secure-by-default primitive to encrypt individual configuration values so the bytes at rest are ciphertext — and to decrypt them transparently when the app reads them.

PostQuantum.Configuration is that primitive. It builds directly on PostQuantum.KeyManagement's envelope-encryption engine, so key custody, rotation, and (later) cloud-KMS providers are a solved problem you plug into, not something this library reinvents. Each value is sealed with its own 256-bit content key under AES-256-GCM; the content key is wrapped by an Argon2id-derived (or KMS) key. The result is a compact token you can commit to source control, and a configuration layer that hands your code plaintext while the repo only ever holds ciphertext.

It is part of the PostQuantum.* family alongside PostQuantum.Jwt and PostQuantum.KeyManagement, and holds to the same discipline: honesty over polish, fail-closed always, no rolled-your-own crypto.

When to use this (and when not to)

Reach for it when:

  • You want secrets at rest in appsettings.json / config servers / env vars to be ciphertext, not plaintext, with decryption that's transparent to application code.
  • You want a single, auditable primitive for "encrypt this config value" across services, with key rotation handled by PostQuantum.KeyManagement.
  • You want defence in depth in front of, or instead of, a vault for values that don't justify a per-read network call — and a forward-looking posture as post-quantum migration begins.
  • You want to keep an air-gapped / local story (Argon2id-derived keys, no external service) and later swap in a cloud KMS without touching application code.

Prefer something else when:

Need Better fit
Centralised secret storage, access policies, audit logs, dynamic secrets A managed vault (Azure Key Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, HashiCorp Vault) — and use this for the values that still land on disk.
Protecting ASP.NET cookies, antiforgery tokens, OAuth state Microsoft.AspNetCore.DataProtection — that's exactly its job.
Quantum-safe key exchange / transport for tokens on the wire PostQuantum.Jwt (PQ JOSE/JWE). This library's hybrid provider does PQ asymmetric key wrapping for config values, not transport.
Encrypting files or large blobs A streaming AEAD / file-encryption library.

Honest framing: the win here is good defaults and ergonomics, not novel cryptography. The primitives are the ones the .NET BCL already ships.

Install

dotnet add package PostQuantum.Configuration --prerelease

This pulls in PostQuantum.KeyManagement (the key engine) and the Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration / DI abstractions.

60-second tour

using Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration;
using PostQuantum.Configuration;
using PostQuantum.KeyManagement.Local;

// 1. A key provider. (In a host: AddPostQuantumKeyManagement. Passphrase from a secret store.)
using var keys = LocalContentKeyProvider.Create("a strong passphrase", LocalKekOptions.Interactive);
IConfigurationProtector protector = new PostQuantumConfigProtector(keys);

// 2. Seal a secret → a token safe to commit.
string token = protector.Protect("Host=db;Username=app;Password=s3cr3t");

// 3. Read it back transparently through configuration.
IConfiguration config = new ConfigurationBuilder()
    .AddEncrypted(
        new Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration.Memory.MemoryConfigurationSource
        {
            InitialData = new Dictionary<string, string?> { ["ConnectionStrings:Db"] = token },
        },
        protector)
    .Build();

string? plaintext = config.GetConnectionString("Db"); // "Host=db;Username=app;Password=s3cr3t"

Usage

Protect and read a value

string token = protector.Protect("sk-live-0123456789");   // -> "pqc.v1.…"
string secret = protector.Unprotect(token);               // -> "sk-live-0123456789"

// Untrusted input? Don't let a bad token throw:
if (protector.TryUnprotect(token, out string? value))
{
    // use value
}

// Async variants exist for cloud-KMS providers where unwrap is a network call:
string t = await protector.ProtectAsync("secret");
string s = await protector.UnprotectAsync(t);

Transparent decryption in IConfiguration

Wrap any configuration source. Protected (pqc.v1.) values are decrypted on read; everything else passes through untouched:

var builder = WebApplication.CreateBuilder(args);

builder.Configuration.Sources.Clear();
builder.Configuration
    .AddEncrypted(
        new JsonConfigurationSource { Path = "appsettings.json", Optional = false, ReloadOnChange = true },
        () => protector)              // factory: resolved lazily, on first protected read
    .AddEnvironmentVariables();

Now appsettings.json can hold "ConnectionStrings:Default": "pqc.v1.…" and your handlers read it as an ordinary string. Decryption is lazy and cached; a config reload clears the cache.

Dependency injection

// PostQuantum.KeyManagement provides the key engine…
builder.Services.AddPostQuantumKeyManagement(o =>
{
    o.Passphrase = builder.Configuration["KeyManagement:Passphrase"]!; // from a secret store / env
    o.KeyringPath = "keyring.bin";                                     // durable, non-secret
});

// …and this library layers the protector on top.
builder.Services.AddPostQuantumConfiguration();   // registers IConfigurationProtector

Resolve IConfigurationProtector anywhere, or use it as the factory for AddEncrypted.

Context binding (swap resistance)

Optionally bind a value to a logical slot so a token can't be lifted from one place and dropped into another (e.g. swapping the primary DB password onto the replica key):

string token = protector.Protect(secret, context: "ConnectionStrings:Primary");
protector.Unprotect(token, context: "ConnectionStrings:Primary"); // ok
protector.Unprotect(token, context: "ConnectionStrings:Replica"); // throws — context mismatch

The transparent layer can bind each value's configuration key as its context automatically:

builder.Configuration.AddEncrypted(jsonSource, () => protector, bindKeyAsContext: true);

Key rotation

Rotation lives in PostQuantum.KeyManagement. Rotate the key-encryption key; old tokens still open because previous KEKs stay available for unwrapping, and new values seal under the new active KEK:

keys.Rotate("a new passphrase", LocalKekOptions.Interactive);
protector.Unprotect(oldToken); // still works

Re-sealing after rotation

After a rotation, old tokens still open but remain wrapped under the old key. Migrate them to the new active key with the re-seal helpers (plaintext is handled through a zeroable Secret internally):

// One value:
string fresh = protector.Reprotect(oldToken);

// A whole map of configuration values, in place — plaintext entries are left untouched:
int resealed = await protector.ReprotectAllAsync(values);   // values: IDictionary<string,string?>

Avoiding lingering plaintext with Secret

Unprotect returns a string, which the CLR cannot reliably zero. For paths that can work with bytes, recover into a Secret that zeroes its buffer on dispose:

using Secret secret = protector.UnprotectToSecret(token);
Use(secret.Bytes);              // ReadOnlySpan<byte>, valid until disposed
// string s = secret.Reveal(); // only if an API forces a string on you

This is a mitigation, not a guarantee — see KNOWN-GAPS.md — but it removes the unavoidable lingering-string for byte-friendly code.

Optional: hybrid post-quantum key wrapping (ML-KEM-768 + ECDH P-256)

By default, content keys are wrapped by PostQuantum.KeyManagement (symmetric, Argon2id-derived KEK — post-quantum by key size). For true post-quantum asymmetric key wrapping, use the hybrid provider: each content key is wrapped to a recipient key pair using ML-KEM-768 (FIPS 203, the post-quantum half) and ECDH P-256 (the classical half), combined via HKDF-SHA256 + AES-256-GCM. The wrap stays secure unless both are broken.

using PostQuantum.Configuration.Hybrid;

// Recipient (the service that decrypts): generate once, persist the private key in a secret store/KMS.
using var recipient = HybridKemContentKeyProvider.Generate();
byte[] publicKey  = recipient.ExportPublicKey();   // distribute to senders; safe to share
byte[] privateKey = recipient.ExportPrivateKey();  // SENSITIVE — store in a secret manager only

// Anyone with the public key can seal (wrap-only):
using var sealer = HybridKemContentKeyProvider.ImportPublicKey(publicKey);
string token = new PostQuantumConfigProtector(sealer).Protect("Host=db;Password=quantum-safe;");

// The recipient (private key) opens it:
using var opener = HybridKemContentKeyProvider.ImportPrivateKey(privateKey);
string secret = new PostQuantumConfigProtector(opener).Unprotect(token);

HybridKemContentKeyProvider is an IContentKeyProvider, so it drops into everything above — AddEncrypted, DI, Reprotect, Secret.

Requirements & honesty. Needs .NET 10+ and a platform where ML-KEM is available (on Linux, OpenSSL 3.5+); the factory methods throw PlatformNotSupportedException otherwise. The combiner follows the standard concatenate-into-HKDF, transcript-bound pattern, but this specific construction is not a named standard and has not been independently audited. See KNOWN-GAPS.md and docs/threat-model.md.

CLI: pqc-config

A companion dotnet tool (PostQuantum.Configuration.Tool) protects, unprotects, and rotates from a shell or CI pipeline:

dotnet tool install --global PostQuantum.Configuration.Tool --prerelease

export PQC_PASSPHRASE='a strong passphrase'           # keep secrets out of shell history
echo 'Host=db;Password=s3cr3t' | pqc-config protect --keyring keyring.txt   # -> pqc.v1.…
pqc-config unprotect --keyring keyring.txt --token pqc.v1.…
pqc-config rotate    --keyring keyring.txt            # fresh key, old tokens still open

Token format

A protected value is a self-contained envelope rendered as text:

pqc.v1.<base64url(body)>
  • pqc.v1. — a stable, greppable prefix. IConfigurationProtector.IsProtected(value) is just a prefix check; the transparent layer uses it to decide what to decrypt.
  • body — a compact, big-endian, length-prefixed binary blob: [version][wrapped-content-key token][12-byte nonce][AES-256-GCM ciphertext][16-byte tag].

The wrapped content key is PostQuantum.KeyManagement's own portable WrappedContentKey token, so a value carries everything needed to recover its data-encryption key from the provider — no shared per-process state. (With the hybrid provider, that wrapped-key blob carries the ML-KEM ciphertext and the ephemeral ECDH public key instead — the token envelope is unchanged.) The decoder uses overflow-safe length arithmetic and caps every field at 1 MiB, so a hostile token cannot trigger a giant allocation or an out-of-bounds read.

Public API at a glance

Member Purpose
IConfigurationProtector Protect / Unprotect / TryUnprotect / UnprotectToSecret (+ async), and static IsProtected.
PostQuantumConfigProtector Default implementation over IContentKeyProvider.
Secret Zeroable, byte-backed recovered secret (disposes → zeroed).
ConfigurationProtectionException Single, opaque failure type for malformed / tampered / wrong-context tokens.
builder.AddEncrypted(source, …) Transparent decrypt-on-read wrapper for any IConfigurationSource.
config.GetDecrypted(key, protector) Explicit decrypt-on-read for one value.
protector.DecryptIfProtected(value) Decrypt if it's a token, pass through otherwise.
protector.Reprotect / ReprotectAllAsync Re-seal values under the active key after rotation.
services.AddPostQuantumConfiguration() DI registration over a registered IContentKeyProvider.
HybridKemContentKeyProvider (net10+) Hybrid ML-KEM-768 + ECDH P-256 key-wrapping IContentKeyProvider.
pqc-config (separate tool package) CLI to protect / unprotect / rotate.

Security posture

We aim to be honest about exactly what this library does and does not give you.

Scope of the "post-quantum" claim. With the default (symmetric) key provider, the post-quantum property is symmetric-by-key-size — AES-256-GCM and Argon2id keep useful margin against a quantum adversary because Grover's algorithm only halves their effective strength (AES-256 → ~128-bit), and no asymmetric KEM is involved. With the optional hybrid provider (ML-KEM-768 + ECDH P-256), you also get post-quantum asymmetric key wrapping — but that construction is non-standard and unaudited (see its usage note). Choose your wording to match the provider you deploy, and see KNOWN-GAPS.md for the precise scope.

What you get

  • Authenticated encryption. AES-256-GCM — tampering with any byte is detected and fails closed, never silently decrypted to garbage. Every single-byte corruption of a token is rejected (there's a test that proves it).
  • Fresh key + nonce per value. Each Protect mints a new 256-bit content key and a new random nonce, so identical plaintexts produce different tokens and there is no deterministic-equality leak.
  • Native primitives, no hand-rolled crypto. AES-GCM is the .NET BCL; key custody, Argon2id, and wrapping are PostQuantum.KeyManagement. This library writes the envelope and the framing, not the cryptography.
  • Fail-closed, opaque failures. Malformed token, tampered ciphertext, wrong key, or wrong context all surface as one ConfigurationProtectionException (or TryUnprotect == false) — callers can't distinguish failure modes, and the message never leaks which one it was.
  • Hostile-input resistance. Token decoding uses overflow-safe length arithmetic and a 1 MiB field cap; TryUnprotect never throws on bad input.
  • Optional context binding for swap resistance (above).

What you must know

  • Recovered plaintext is a string. .NET strings are immutable and can't be reliably zeroed, so a decrypted secret may linger on the managed heap until GC. Intermediate byte buffers are zeroed. This is an inherent limit of any string-returning API — see KNOWN-GAPS.md.
  • Confidentiality rests entirely on the key provider. A weak passphrase, a leaked keyring + passphrase, or an unprotected KMS makes the ciphertext openable. Use a strong Argon2id work factor and treat the passphrase as a real secret.
  • Not a vault. No access policies, no audit log, no per-secret authorisation. Pair with one for those properties.
  • Preview. Treat the API and pqc.v1 token format as unstable until 1.0.

Full detail: SECURITY.md, docs/threat-model.md, KNOWN-GAPS.md.

Threat model (short form)

The library defends against… …but not
Plaintext secrets in a repo, backup, or config file An attacker who holds both the keyring / KMS access and the passphrase
Tampering with stored ciphertext (AES-GCM authentication) A weak passphrase / low Argon2id work factor (offline guessing)
A value being moved to the wrong slot (with context binding) Secrets read from process memory after decryption (mitigated, not solved, by Secret)
Hostile / oversized tokens (overflow-safe, capped decoding) A quantum break of the classical half alone — the ML-KEM half still holds (hybrid provider)

The full attacker model and security invariants are in docs/threat-model.md.

Supply chain

This package is built for verifiable provenance:

  • Deterministic, reproducible builds (Deterministic, ContinuousIntegrationBuild in CI).

  • Build-provenance attestation — the release workflow attests every .nupkg with actions/attest-build-provenance; verify with gh attestation verify.

  • SourceLink + embedded untracked sources + a symbol package (.snupkg) so stack traces resolve to exact source.

  • SBOM (CycloneDX) generated for every release — regenerate and inspect locally:

    ./build/generate-sbom.sh           # writes sbom/PostQuantum.Configuration.cdx.json

  • Verify a downloaded package before trusting it:

    # NuGet signature (author + repository countersignature)
dotnet nuget verify PostQuantum.Configuration.0.1.0-preview.1.nupkg

# Pin and restore with integrity checking
dotnet restore --locked-mode      # honours packages.lock.json hashes

What is not yet in place is stated plainly in docs/supply-chain.md: an author code-signing certificate and an external security audit are still roadmap.

Samples

See samples/:

  • QuickStart — a self-contained console tour (protect, transparent read, tamper rejection, rotation). dotnet run --project samples/QuickStart.
  • WebApi — a production-shaped ASP.NET Core minimal API with encrypted tokens committed in appsettings.json, DI wiring, and a token-minting endpoint. dotnet run --project samples/WebApi.

Compatibility

Surface Supported
Target frameworks net8.0, net9.0, net10.0
OS Windows, Linux, macOS — anywhere .NET 8+ runs. AES-GCM is hardware-accelerated on modern CPUs.
AOT / trimming IsAotCompatible=true. The public surface is string in, string out.
Hybrid provider .NET 10+ and a host with ML-KEM (on Linux, OpenSSL 3.5+). Everything else has no such requirement.
Dependencies PostQuantum.KeyManagement, Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration.Abstractions / .Primitives / .DependencyInjection.Abstractions.

The core library needs no native post-quantum primitives, so it runs identically everywhere. Only the optional hybrid provider requires .NET 10 + ML-KEM; it degrades to a clear PlatformNotSupportedException where unavailable.

Building from source

dotnet build       # builds net8.0, net9.0, net10.0 — zero warnings (warnings are errors)
dotnet test        # 69 tests; hybrid ML-KEM tests run where ML-KEM is available, skip cleanly otherwise
dotnet format --verify-no-changes
dotnet pack -c Release

The hybrid ML-KEM tests skip themselves (with a clear reason) on hosts without ML-KEM. To run them, use .NET 10 with OpenSSL 3.5+ — for example, point the runtime at a newer OpenSSL:

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/path/to/openssl-3.5/lib dotnet test   # 69 tests, zero skips

Project status & roadmap

0.2.0-preview.1 — the 0.1 roadmap is done: the pqc-config CLI, the zeroable Secret return, the Reprotect / ReprotectAllAsync re-seal helpers, and the hybrid ML-KEM-768 + ECDH P-256 provider all ship and are tested. Core protect / unprotect, the transparent IConfiguration layer, DI, and context binding are complete. The API and token format are not yet frozen.

Toward 1.0 (see KNOWN-GAPS.md for the honest gap list):

  1. External security review of the envelope and the hybrid combiner — the prerequisite for dropping the "unaudited" caveat and for a stable 1.0.
  2. Author code-signing certificate to complement the build-provenance attestations already produced.
  3. Standardised hybrid — track the IETF/NIST hybrid-KEM work and align the construction with a named scheme once one stabilises.
  4. Freeze the API and pqc.v1 token format and commit to SemVer wire-compatibility.

License

MIT © 2026 Paul Clark.

To God be the glory — 1 Corinthians 10:31.

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Post-quantum protected configuration and secrets management for .NET.

Topics

cryptography csharp dotnet appsettings configuration ecdh aes-gcm secure-by-default key-wrapping post-quantum-cryptography authenticated-encryption argon2id hybrid-encryption envelope-encryption secrets-management key-rotation ml-kem fips-203

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