Update 01. 08. 2026 – Appendix C This Appendix C adds the mathematical and experimental security analysis of ZEUS X-Trust as an authentication system and compares its modeled effective work factor with the established reference classes of SHA-256 and SHA-512. The new appendix documents: deterministic reproduction of the enrolled amplitude state under identical initialization conditions; exact same-seed distance of 0. 0 without stored or reloaded weights; stable fixed-point formation without amplitude-profile collapse; 90 independent reinitializations and 4, 005 pairwise foreign-instance comparisons; zero observed authentication-state collisions; a minimum foreign-instance distance of 2. 77×1072. 77 10⁷2. 77×107 at authentication-relevant positions; a measured separation of approximately 2. 8×10112. 8 10^112. 8×1011 acceptance-window widths; normalized structural differences showing that the separation is not caused solely by amplitude scaling; and the mathematical derivation of the current 22562^2562256-class effective work-factor model based on twelve coupled position–amplitude relations. Appendix C also incorporates the operational results of ZEUS X-Trust Prototype V2: 1, 000 unauthorized attacks across 18 attack classes; 1, 000 DENY; 0 unauthorized ACCEPT; 0 processing errors; 0 breach events; and a successful positive control using the genuine password. The appendix explains why the nominal entropy of a short password does not represent the complete ZEUS X-Trust authentication space. The password acts as the addressing mechanism, while the effective authentication object is formed by the coupled relation between the positional map, the live amplitude profile, and the enrolled neural instance. The resulting model places ZEUS X-Trust in the 22562^2562256 effective work-factor class, corresponding in order of magnitude to SHA-256 preimage resistance and SHA-512 generic collision resistance, while operating through a fundamentally different instance-bound live-state mechanism. A planned Prototype V3 extension will additionally combine the human-readable password with selected live amplitudes before authentication mapping. This can transform a short input into a substantially enlarged, volatile, and instance-bound internal authentication representation without creating a reusable static offline target. Video: Music and Voice: MS Clipchamp. Video: Copyright Stefan Trauth _______________________ Update 31. 07. 2026 – Appendix B This Appendix B extends the experimental validation reported in Appendix A from architectural and end-to-end testing to the first controlled adversarial evaluation of the operational ZEUS X-Trust prototype. The new appendix documents a complete campaign of 500 real password-based attack attempts across 14 attack profiles, executed over approximately 5. 4 hours against one continuously enrolled live neural instance. The campaign included both reference-aware attacks derived from partial or complete knowledge of the enrollment password and reference-blind attacks such as brute-force samples, dictionary patterns, leetspeak mutations, semantic guesses, rule-based combinations, typographical attacks, and hybrid profiles. The final result was: 500 DENY 0 unauthorized ACCEPT 0 processing errors 0 breach events The appendix explains how the attacks were processed through the full ZEUS X-Trust protection path. Of the 500 adversarial inputs, 482 reached neural execution. Among these, 377 produced addressable positional checks and supported full position-bound amplitude-drift analysis. A further 105 reached the neural process but addressed no enrolled positions and were rejected as unknownchars. The remaining 18 empty or non-printable inputs were rejected by the character-set guard before neural execution. The new results show that rejection was not based on a single binary rule. Unauthorized inputs failed through different mechanisms, including invalid input structure, absence of addressable positions, positional mismatch, amplitude mismatch, or the combined failure of the enrolled map-profile-instance relation. Appendix B also documents: the operational fail-closed prototype logic; the definition of unauthorized ACCEPT and actual breach; the use of one unchanged live neural instance throughout the full campaign; approximately 145, 000 cumulative neural iterations without progressive convergence toward an unauthorized state; the measured security distance between the valid reference and rejected attack states; the distribution of amplitude drift across multiple mapped neural layers; and the preservation of numerical stability throughout the campaign. The intentionally simple six-character enrollment password demonstrates that ZEUS X-Trust security is not determined by password length alone. The password selects the authentication geometry, while the complete protection relation is formed by the password-controlled positional map, the live amplitude profile, and the specific enrolled neural instance. This appendix was necessary to move ZEUS X-Trust beyond experimental feasibility and functional prototype testing into documented adversarial validation under real operating conditions. The results provide the technical basis for the next development phases: system-level attacks against the surrounding implementation; independent watchdog integration; amplitude-proximity-based attack escalation; continuous live-state integrity monitoring; and controlled external black-box validation without disclosure of the proprietary source code, positional maps, reference amplitudes, or internal architecture. _______________________ Update 25. 07. 2026 - Appendix A This Appendix A documents the experimental validation of ZEUS X-Trust from stable amplitude-state formation to an integrated live-state authentication prototype. It validates Stages 3–5 across four original ZEUS X-Trust architectures, including stability, separability, deterministic password-controlled mapping, instance binding, and end-to-end authentication. It demonstrates that incorrect passwords are rejected through positional mismatch, while newly initialized instances are rejected through amplitude mismatch. It documents the complete enrollment, login, deny, no-overwrite, restart, and re-enrollment logic required for an operational prototype. It was necessary to move ZEUS X-Trust from a theoretical architecture to an experimentally defined and reproducible authentication workflow. The results provide the technical basis for operational deployment, adversarial testing, and the planned watchdog-based continuous integrity monitoring _______________________ Preprint This record presents a substantive new research preprint in the ZEUS X-Trust / IGAN research line. It continues and substantially extends the earlier work “AI-Powered Quantum-Resistant Authentication and Key-Management System” by reframing the architecture as a ZEUS-derived Information-Geometric Amplitude Network approach for live-state authentication, amplitude-bound key states, watchdog-recorded IGAN reference values, and runtime integrity validation. ZEUS X-Trust / IGAN proposes an authentication and key-management architecture that shifts the primary security object away from conventional stored hashes, static keys, token objects, or recoverable credential material. During enrollment, the password acts both as a map into the IGAN amplitude space and as a state generator or selector for the initial valid IGAN amplitude-state configuration. During runtime authentication, the password no longer continuously generates the neural state. Instead, it acts only as an addressing map that selects the relevant IGAN amplitude positions. The running IGAN provides the currently observed values at those same positions, while the watchdog compares them against the corresponding IGAN reference values recorded during enrollment. The paper introduces the following core concepts: - ZEUS X-Trust as a ZEUS-derived authentication and key-management architecture; - Information-Geometric Amplitude Networks as the measurable amplitude-state layer; - password-controlled mapping into selected layer, neuron, and amplitude positions; - amplitude-bound key states as live validation relations rather than static bitstrings; - watchdog-based comparison of current IGAN values against enrolled IGAN reference values; - prototype measurements on fixed-point formation, amplitude separability, final-amplitude distributions, and post-fixed-point drift; - the security implications of no useful verification oracle, coupled map-and-value unknowns, instance-specific amplitude-state behavior, and watchdog-enforced rejection outside configured tolerance windows; - open engineering constraints including tolerance calibration, profile-vector validation, watchdog hardening, reference protection, replay/substitution testing, redundancy, recovery, and attacker-model-specific entropy analysis. The broader theoretical context is situated in the author’s ZEUS framework and the information-first model developed in “The Structure of Reality, ” where information is treated as ontologically primary and physical, geometric, and computational structures are interpreted as derived information-state relations. In the present work, this framework is narrowed to the operational question of whether information-geometric amplitude states can be used for authentication, key management, and live-state integrity validation. The external references in the paper are not presented as foundations from which ZEUS X-Trust / IGAN was derived. They are used to delimit the surrounding research landscape and to distinguish the proposed mechanism from adjacent work in neural password authentication, neural key binding, PUF-style reference comparison, and Zero Trust security. To the author’s knowledge, no identified prior work combines password-controlled mappin
Stefan Trauth (2026) studied this question.
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