JSON Security Specifications (24 KB)

v4.2.0

📅 Updated: 2026-03-15 🔒 Security Tier: Enterprise 📦 Module: 24 KB Optimized

⚙️ Protocol Overview

The Aevum Zenth JSON Security Specification defines the standardized payload structure, authentication flow, encryption parameters, and validation rules for all internal and external API communications. The 24 KB variant is optimized for constrained environments, edge nodes, and high-throughput microservices.

⚡ Performance Note This specification enforces strict payload caps, binary-safe serialization fallbacks, and zero-allocation parsing paths where applicable. All endpoints must comply to guarantee < 2ms latency overhead.

🔑 Authentication & Authorization

All JSON payloads must carry an opaque bearer token via the standard header. Token validation occurs before deserialization to prevent injection and resource exhaustion attacks.

headers.json

{
  "Authorization: Bearer az_eyJhbGciOiJFUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9...
  "X-AZ-Request-ID: uuid-v7:01J7X...4k2p
  "X-AZ-Client-Version: 24kb-spec/4.2.0
}

Header	Type	Required	Description
`Authorization`	string	Yes	JWT with ES256 signature, max lifetime 15m
`X-AZ-Request-ID`	string	Yes	UUIDv7 for distributed tracing & audit logs
`X-AZ-Scope`	string[]	Conditional	Comma-separated resource scopes (e.g., `read:data,write:config`)

🔐 Payload Encryption

Sensitive payloads must be encrypted using AES-256-GCM with ECDH key exchange (P-256 curve). The JSON wrapper contains metadata for decryption context.

encrypted-payload.json

{
  "version: 1,
  "enc: "A256GCM",
  "kid: "az-edge-north-04",
  "iv: "base64:8x3kL9mP0qR2tV5w",
  "payload: "base64:encrypted_hex_stream_here"
}

Decryption services must validate the `kid` against the active key rotation schedule. Expired keys automatically trigger a 401.04 response.

📐 Schema Validation

All inbound/outbound JSON must conform to JSON Schema Draft 2020-12. The 24 KB module enforces strict type coercion and rejects unknown keys by default.

Required fields are validated before business logic execution
String lengths are capped at 4096 bytes to prevent buffer attacks
Numbers are restricted to 64-bit IEEE 754 range
Arrays are limited to 1000 elements maximum
Objects reject duplicate keys per RFC 8259 §1.2 (enforced via strict parser)

📦 24 KB Module Constraints

This specification is tailored for environments with strict memory budgets (edge devices, IoT gateways, high-density containers). The following hard limits apply:

Parameter	Limit	Fallback
Parsed JSON Size	24,576 bytes	Truncate + 413 Payload Too Large
Max Nesting Depth	6 levels	Reject with 400.02
Allocation Budget	≤ 32 KB RSS	Switch to zero-copy stream parser
Parse Timeout	5 ms	Abort & queue for retry

🧠 Optimization Tip Use the compact serialization flag to strip whitespace and shorten key aliases. This typically reduces payloads by 18-22% without loss of semantic integrity.

🛡️ Mandatory Security Headers

Every response from Aevum Zenth endpoints must include the following security headers to enforce transport and application-level protections.

Header	Value	Purpose
`Content-Type`	application/json; charset=utf-8	Prevent MIME sniffing
`X-Content-Type-Options`	nosniff	Block content type override
`Strict-Transport-Security`	max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload	Enforce HTTPS
`X-AZ-Security-Level`	enterprise	Internal compliance tagging
`Cache-Control`	no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate	Prevent sensitive data caching

⚠️ Error Response Format

All error states return standardized JSON matching RFC 7807 (Problem Details) with Aevum Zenth extensions.

error-response.json

{
  "type: "https://api.aevumzenth.com/errors/invalid-schema",
  "title: "Schema Validation Failed",
  "status: 400,
  "code: "AZ_VALIDATION_ERR",
  "detail: "Field 'payload.metadata' exceeded 24 KB limit.",
  "instance: "/v4/authenticate"
}

📜 Compliance & Audit

This specification aligns with:

ISO/IEC 27001:2022 (Information Security Management)
NIST SP 800-171 (Controlled Unclassified Information)
OWASP API Security Top 10 (2023 Edition)
GDPR Art. 32 (Security of Processing)

Automated compliance scans run every 24 hours against all endpoints serving this spec. Audit logs are immutable and retained for 7 years per jurisdictional requirements.