Why We Started Seceq
Cryptography is fundamental to modern software. Every time you visit a website, send a message, or make a payment, cryptographic algorithms protect your data. Yet implementing cryptography correctly remains one of the hardest challenges in software engineering.
We've seen this firsthand. As engineers working on security-critical systems, we repeatedly encountered the same problems:
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Performance vs. Safety: Fast implementations in C/C++ are prone to memory safety vulnerabilities. Safe implementations in high-level languages are too slow for production use.
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Complexity vs. Correctness: Cryptographic algorithms are intricate. Small implementation mistakes—an off-by-one error, a timing variation, a forgotten edge case—can completely compromise security.
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Legacy vs. Future: The industry needs to migrate to post-quantum cryptography, but most libraries either don't support it or provide poor performance.
Seceq exists to solve these problems.
Our Approach
1. Rust for Memory Safety
Every line of code in our libraries is written in Rust. The ownership system eliminates entire classes of vulnerabilities—buffer overflows, use-after-free, data races—at compile time.
This isn't just theoretical. Memory safety bugs account for 70% of security vulnerabilities in major software projects. By choosing Rust, we eliminate these bugs before they can occur.
2. Formal Verification for Correctness
Testing can find bugs, but it can't prove their absence. For cryptographic code, where a single mistake can expose millions of users, we need stronger guarantees.
We use formal verification to prove mathematical correctness of our implementations. When a proof succeeds, we know the code works correctly for all possible inputs—not just the cases we thought to test.
3. Performance Without Compromise
Safety and performance are often seen as trade-offs. We reject this premise.
Through careful algorithm design, architecture-specific optimizations, and compiler tuning, HPCrypt achieves performance competitive with C libraries—while maintaining full memory safety.
What We're Building
HPCrypt: High-Performance Cryptographic Library
Our flagship project is HPCrypt, a comprehensive cryptographic library providing:
Symmetric Cryptography
- AES-GCM (128/192/256-bit)
- ChaCha20-Poly1305
- AES-GCM-SIV for nonce-reuse resistance
Hash Functions
- SHA-2 family (SHA-256, SHA-384, SHA-512)
- SHA-3 family (SHA3-256, SHA3-512, SHAKE128, SHAKE256)
- BLAKE3 for maximum performance
Post-Quantum Cryptography
- ML-KEM (FIPS 203) for key encapsulation
- ML-DSA (FIPS 204) for digital signatures
- SLH-DSA (FIPS 205) for hash-based signatures
Classical Public-Key Cryptography
- X25519 for key exchange
- Ed25519 for digital signatures
- RSA for legacy compatibility
HPTLS: Secure Communication
Building on HPCrypt, we're developing HPTLS—a TLS 1.3 implementation with native post-quantum support. HPTLS enables:
- Hybrid key exchange (X25519 + ML-KEM)
- Post-quantum cipher suites
- QUIC protocol support
- Zero-copy record processing
ZKIR: Zero-Knowledge Infrastructure
Our research project ZKIR explores a novel approach to zero-knowledge proofs. By designing a custom instruction set architecture optimized for STARK proving, we achieve significant efficiency improvements over existing zkVMs.
Our Values
Security First
Every design decision starts with security. Performance, usability, and features are important—but never at the expense of security.
Open Source
All our code is open source. Security through obscurity doesn't work. Our implementations gain strength from public scrutiny, academic review, and community contributions.
Quality Over Quantity
We'd rather provide five well-implemented algorithms than fifty poorly-tested ones. Every primitive we ship is thoroughly tested, benchmarked, and documented.
Honest Communication
We don't make claims we can't back up. When we say our code is formally verified, we provide the proofs. When we publish benchmarks, we share our methodology and make results reproducible.
The Team
Seceq was founded by engineers with deep experience in cryptography, systems programming, and security. Our backgrounds span:
- Cryptographic library development
- Formal verification research
- High-frequency trading systems
- Security auditing and penetration testing
We've contributed to open-source cryptographic projects, published research on implementation security, and built production systems handling sensitive data.
What's Next
We're in the early stages, but our roadmap is ambitious:
2024
- HPCrypt 1.0 release with core primitives
- Comprehensive documentation and examples
- Security audit by independent firm
2025
- HPCrypt 2.0 with post-quantum algorithms
- HPTLS beta release
- ZKIR research publication
2026 and Beyond
- Enterprise support offerings
- Hardware security module integration
- Expanded algorithm coverage
Get Involved
We believe in the power of community. Here's how you can participate:
Use Our Libraries
The best feedback comes from real-world usage. Try HPCrypt in your projects and let us know what works and what doesn't.
Contribute
Our repositories are open for contributions. Whether it's code, documentation, or bug reports, every contribution helps.
Spread the Word
If you find our work valuable, tell others. Security improves when good tools are widely adopted.
Closing Thoughts
The digital world runs on cryptography. As quantum computing advances and threats evolve, the need for secure, performant, and accessible cryptographic tools will only grow.
We're building Seceq to meet this need. Our goal is ambitious: make world-class cryptography available to every developer, regardless of their security expertise.
This is just the beginning. We're excited to share this journey with you.
Welcome to Seceq.