Conduit OS: Secure Appliance Infrastructure for the Conduit Network

Overview

Conduit OS is the hardened operating system layer that runs on every appliance in the Conduit Network, the software at the network's Trusted Execution Layer. Unlike commodity operating systems, Conduit OS is immutable, attested, and purpose-built for high-assurance compute environments.

Why a Custom OS?

General-purpose operating systems introduce unpredictable attack surfaces: kernel vulnerabilities, supply chain risks, and unverified system state. For financial services institutions and public sector operators who require provable compute integrity, this is unacceptable.

Conduit OS addresses this by:

• Booting from a read-only, cryptographically signed image
• Attesting its runtime state through a FIPS-graded trusted execution environment (TEE)
• Exposing a minimal, auditable API surface to workloads

Financial Services

For capital markets and settlement infrastructure, Conduit OS enables:

• Provable execution environments for regulated workloads
• Continuous attestation that satisfies compliance requirements
• Hardware-rooted audit trails for every transaction

Public Sector

Government and defence deployments demand infrastructure that can operate in adversarial environments without compromise. Conduit OS delivers:

• FIPS 140-2 Level 3 cryptographic operations
• Air-gap compatible appliance configurations
• Tamper-evident runtime state

How It Works

1. The appliance boots into a signed Conduit OS image verified by the hardware root of trust
2. The trusted execution environment attests the OS state to the network
3. Workloads are issued only to appliances with valid, current attestations
4. Any deviation from the expected state triggers automatic exclusion from the network