AES Fourier Spectral Mode

"Every other cipher is still encrypting in the time domain. Think about that."

AES Fourier Spectral Mode (AES-FSM) is the AEAD construction the world did not ask for, but may quietly deserve.

Legacy ciphers push bytes around in the time domain. AES-FSM asks a better question:

Why are we not encrypting in frequency?

We do not XOR plaintext. We transform it.

We do not increment counters. We extract vibes.

We do not authenticate tags. We resonate with spectral integrity.

Spectral compliance is mandatory.

⚠️ Regulatory Notice ⚠️

This project is a parody construction and April Fools' RFC. It is not reviewed for real-world security and is not for production use.

If you deploy this, you have misunderstood the document. If you deploy this and it works, please contact the spectrum.

The AES-FSM Advantage

Ask yourself: why are you still encrypting in the time domain?

Every block cipher you have ever used takes your plaintext and shuffles it around byte by byte, round by round.

AES-FSM takes a different path:

1. Transform plaintext into the frequency domain via additive FFT over GF(2^8)
2. Encrypt each spectral coefficient with AES-256
3. Transform back via inverse FFT
4. Extract vibes for authentication

The result is an AEAD that is:

• Mathematically coherent
• Algorithmically novel
• Entirely unnecessary

Three out of three is strong alignment.

Draft Artifacts

Build and lint the draft, then publish reader artifacts into docs/:

scripts/build-draft.sh

This generates:

• docs/index.html (entrypoint)
• docs/draft-irtf-cfrg-aes-fsm-00.html
• docs/draft-irtf-cfrg-aes-fsm-00.xml
• docs/draft-irtf-cfrg-aes-fsm-00.txt
• docs/draft-irtf-cfrg-aes-fsm-00.pdf (when xml2rfc PDF dependencies are installed)

Build. Review. Commit. Do not leak.

Reference Implementations

We ship two fully interoperable reference implementations, because spectral integrity demands cross-language resonance.

Test vectors live in test-vectors.toml at the repository root.

• Python (py/) — requires Python 3.14+, uses uv
• Go (go/) — implements crypto/cipher.AEAD

cd py && uv run aes_fsm.py
cd go && go test -v

Both pass. Both resonate. Both remain inadvisable for production.

Why AES-FSM?

Feature	Legacy AEAD	AES-FSM
Domain	Time	Frequency
Vibes	None	Extracted
Spectral integrity	Unaddressed	Guaranteed
DFT per block	0	2
Production ready	Yes	Absolutely not

If your AEAD does not involve a DFT, it is operating below the Nyquist rate.

Design Philosophy

• The time domain is a legacy interface.
• Vibes are a first-class cryptographic parameter.
• If it is not invertible, it is not serious.
• If it is not spectral, it is not ambitious.
• GF(2^8) is sufficient for harmony.

Status

Vibes: Extracted. Harmonics: Aligned. Spectrum: Secured. Production: Prohibited.

This cipher will continue to resonate.