4. Architecture
4.1 Boot Process (step-by-step)
UEFI → GRUB2 (shim-signed)
GRUB loads encrypted kernel + initramfs (LUKS2 header with null passphrase—header itself is the key)
Kernel command line: quiet loglevel=0 rd.systemd.show_status=false random.trust_cpu=off slab_nomerge pti=on spectre_v2=on spec_store_bypass_disable=on tsx=off tsx_async_abort=full,nosmt mds=full,nosmt nosmt=force
Initramfs extracts to tmpfs, immediately wipes itself from the boot medium
SierraCore daemon starts as PID 1
4.2 SierraCore Threshold Engine (technical)
Master seed: 256-bit from concatenated entropy of /dev/hwrng + rdrand + haveged + CPU timestamp counter jitter
Shamir Secret Sharing over Rijndael GF(2²⁵⁶) with 5-of-5 thresholds (intentionally no recovery—lose one shard and everything is gone forever)
Each shard stored in a separate memfd_create() anonymous file mapped MAP_PRIVATE | MAP_LOCKED
Reconstruction performed in a 409-byte stack buffer inside a seccomp-bpf sandbox that allows only add, xor, mul, and exit syscalls
After signing, the stack buffer is overwritten with memset_s (constant-time zero)
4.3 NullPipe – Full Specification
7–9 relay nodes spun up with Firecracker microVMs inside the host RAM (each < 8 MB)
Every relay runs a stripped Alpine Linux with only dropbear, corkscrew, and socat
Circuit topology: entry → 3 middle → 2 guard → exit → final RPC node
Exit node rewrites User-Agent, Accept-Language, Sec-CH-UA, and injects random EIP-4361 noise
WebRTC disabled at kernel level (/dev/null → /sys/class/drm/card0/device/webrtc)
DNS forced through exit node with DNS-over-HTTPS to a random Cloudflare/Quad9 resolver every hop
4.4 TraceKill™ – The Full Sequence (with timings on Ryzen 9 7950X3D)
Signal reception (SIGUSR1 or ACPI)
0.3 μs
Custom kernel module intercepts before systemd
Lock all user namespaces
1.1 ms
unshare -m reversal + cgroup freeze
Overwrite 5 shards (7× random + DoD)
24 ms
AVX-512 accelerated xor loops
Zero kernel heaps, slab, page cache
31 ms
Custom drop_caches + madv_dontneed on every mmapped region
Overwrite boot medium (if writable)
110 ms
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=1M status=none in background thread
Trigger cold reset
2 ms
echo 1 > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power/reset + kexec to UEFI
Total
< 97 ms
Even liquid-nitrogen attackers lose
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