Aether Enclave

Aether Enclave is a radiation-resilient, bare-metal WebAssembly unikernel for aerospace, maritime, and extreme edge deployments. It runs sovereign diagnostic logic in an isolated WASM sandbox, commits a verifiable outcome to hardware MMIO, and self-annihilates—zeroing memory and returning to deep dormancy—so no persistent attack surface or data residue remains between wake cycles.

Built for operators who require absolute data sovereignty, privacy-first execution (no network stack, no disk, no OS), and stateless wake-run-scrub cycles on every physical interrupt.

---

Why Aether Enclave?

Principle	What it means in practice
Data sovereignty	Sensor reads and uplink commits occur only through a fixed MMIO map you control; the guest never sees host pointers.
Privacy-first	#![no_std] Ring-0 image: no libc, no scheduler, no background services.
Stateless execution	Each IRQ triggers reset_arena() → WASM run → sandbox annihilation → cli/hlt; nothing survives the cycle.
Edge / radiation posture	Static allocation, bump arena, strict guest linear-memory cap—predictable memory, no heap fragmentation surprises.

---

How It Works

Every mission cycle follows the same deterministic pipeline:

┌─────────────┐    ┌──────────────┐    ┌─────────────────┐    ┌──────────────────┐    ┌──────────────────┐
│  Dormancy   │───▶│ Hardware IRQ │───▶│  WASM Payload   │───▶│ MMIO Proof Commit │───▶│ Self-Annihilation │
│  (HLT/STI)  │    │  0x20 / 0x21 │    │ evaluate_limits │    │ 64-bit digest    │    │ zero + cli/hlt   │
└─────────────┘    └──────────────┘    └─────────────────┘    └──────────────────┘    └──────────────────┘

1. Dormancy — The core idles with interrupts enabled, executing hlt until a physical (or bench-injected) IRQ fires.
2. Hardware IRQ — Vectors 0x20 (atmospheric pressure threshold) or 0x21 (kinetic joint) latch the wake; the ISR calls sovereign_bootstrap with interrupts masked.
3. WASM payload — aerospace_payload runs inside wasmi on a fresh 4 MiB bump arena; it reads pressure/dose via the aether host bridge, evaluates limits, and commits telemetry.
4. MMIO proof — The host fuses guest status + sensor state into a 64-bit digest and writes REG_UPLINK_COMMIT_LO/HI (verifiable outcome for ground systems / ZKP pipelines).
5. Self-annihilation — Sandbox and arena are zeroed, GPRs cleared, PMU dormancy issued, then cli + hlt (QEMU: isa-debug-exit with success code 33).

See ARCHITECTURE.md for register maps, memory layout, and boot/IDT details.

---

Workspace

Crate	Target	Role
enclave_kernel	x86_64-unknown-none	Ring-0 unikernel: bootloader entry, IDT, MMIO, wasmi host, shutdown
aerospace_payload	wasm32-unknown-unknown	#![no_std] cdylib guest: limit evaluation + telemetry

enclave_kernel/build.rs compiles the payload at kernel build time and embeds WASM_BYTES in src/wasm_payload.rs (auto-generated; do not edit by hand).

---

Quick Start

Prerequisites

• Rust (toolchain per rust-toolchain.toml)
• Nightly (for build-std on the kernel target)
• bootimage — cargo install bootimage
• QEMU qemu-system-x86_64 with isa-debug-exit (configured in enclave_kernel/Cargo.toml)

rustup target add x86_64-unknown-none wasm32-unknown-unknown
rustup component add rust-src --toolchain nightly
cargo install bootimage

Build

From the workspace root:

cargo +nightly build -p enclave_kernel \
  -Z build-std=core,alloc,compiler_builtins \
  -Z build-std-features=compiler-builtins-mem

Run (QEMU)

cargo +nightly run -p enclave_kernel \
  -Z build-std=core,alloc,compiler_builtins \
  -Z build-std-features=compiler-builtins-mem

Serial output appears on COM1 (-serial stdio). The stock bench harness injects an O₂/pressure drop and software IRQ 0x20; a successful cycle prints:

[AETHER] cycle success — guest=3 proof=0x........ vector=0x20 — self-annihilation

QEMU then exits with process exit code 33 — that is the expected success path (see ARCHITECTURE.md § QEMU exit code 33).

Edit the guest payload

Change aerospace_payload/src/lib.rs, then rebuild enclave_kernel; wasm_payload.rs regenerates automatically.

---

WASM Host Bridge (at a glance)

Guest imports (module "aether"):

#[link(wasm_import_module = "aether")]
extern "C" {
    fn read_atmospheric_pressure() -> f32;
    fn read_radiation_dosimeter() -> i32;
    fn commit_telemetry_vector(ptr: i32, len: i32);
    fn commit_uplink(proof_lo: i32, proof_hi: i32);
}

Guest exports: evaluate_limits, diagnostic, payload_version, memory.

Under bench injection (sim_inject_o2_drop: 0.12 atm, 1250 dose), evaluate_limits returns status bitmask 3 (STATUS_PRESSURE_LOW | STATUS_DOSE_HIGH).

---

License

AGPL-3.0-or-later — see crate manifests (enclave_kernel, aerospace_payload). Network deployment or SaaS use may require source distribution to users; review the license before production deployment.

---

Further reading

• ARCHITECTURE.md — Ring-0 boot, memory enclave, cap_guest_memory, IDT/ISR, proof algebra, self-annihilation