(Originally posted on the Linux Weekly News)

At this year’s FOSDEM in Brussels, Jan Tobias Mühlberg gave a talk on the latest work on Sancus, a project that was originally presented at the USENIX Security Symposium in 2013. The project is a fully open-source hardware platform to support “trusted computing” and other security functionality. It is designed to be used for internet of things (IoT) devices, automotive applications, critical infrastructure, and other embedded devices where trusted code is expected to be run.

A common security practice for some time now has been to sign executables to ensure that only the expected code is running on a system and to prevent software that is not trusted from being loaded and executed. Sancus is an architecture for trusted embedded computing that enables local and remote attestation of signed software, safe and secure storage of secrets such as encryption keys and certificates, and isolation of memory regions between software modules. In addition to the technical specification [PDF], the project also has a working implementation of code and hardware consisting of compiler modifications, additions to the hardware description language for a microcontroller to add functionality to the processor, a simulator, header files, and assorted tools to tie everything together.

Many people are already familiar with code signing; by default, smartphones won’t install apps that haven’t been approved by the vendor (i.e. Apple or Google) because each app must be submitted for approval and then signed using a key that is shipped pre-installed on every phone. Similarly, many computers support mechanisms like ARM TrustZone or UEFI Secure Boot that are designed to prevent hardware rootkits at the bootloader level. In practice, some of those technologies have been used to restrict computers to boot only Microsoft Windows or Google Chrome OS, though there are ways to disable the enforcement for most hardware.

In somewhat of a contrast to more proprietary schemes that some argue restrict the freedom of end-users, the Sancus project is a completely open-source design built explicitly on open-source hardware, libraries, operating systems, crypto, and compilers. It can be used, if desired, in specialized contexts where it is of critical importance that trusted code runs in isolation, on say an automobile braking actuator attached to a controller area network bus, or a smart grid system such as the type that was hacked in Ukraine during the attack by Russia. These are the opposite of general-purpose devices; instead, one specific function must be performed and integrity and isolation are critical.

The problem is that many medical devices, automotive controllers, industrial controllers, and similar sensitive embedded systems are made up of limited microcontrollers that may have software modules from different vendors. Misbehaving or malicious software can interfere in the operation of those other modules, expose or steal secrets, and compromise the integrity of the system. Integrity checks based in software are bypassed relatively easily compared to gate-level hardware checking; those checks also add considerable overhead and non-deterministic performance behavior.

Sancus 2.0 extends the openMSP430 16-bit microcontroller with a small and efficient set of strong security primitives, weighing in at under 1,500 lines of Verilog code and increasing power consumption by about 6%, according to Mühlberg. It can disallow jumps to undeclared entry points, provide memory isolation, and attestation for software modules.

Besides providing a key hierarchy and chain of trust for loading software modules, Sancus has a simple metadata descriptor for each module that stores the .text and .data ranges in memory; it then ensures that a .data section is inaccessible unless the program counter is in the .text range of the appropriate module. This is a simple but effective process isolation mechanism to ensure that secrets are not accessible from other software modules and that one module cannot disturb the memory of other modules.

Sancus 2.0 comes with openMSP430 hardware extension Verilog code for use with FPGA boards and with the open-source Icarus Verilog tool. A simple “hello, world” example module written in C demonstrates the basic structure of a software module designed to be loaded in a trusted environment. There are also more complex examples and a demonstration trusted vehicular component system. An LLVM-based compiler is used to compile software to signed modules designed to be loaded by a trusted microcontroller.

Mühlberg mentioned that there is ongoing work on creating secure paths between peripherals for secure I/O, integration with common existing hardware solutions such as ARM TrustZone or Intel SGX, formal verification, and ensuring suitability for realtime applications.

To give a feel for the system in action, Mühlberg showed a demonstration video comparing two simulated automotive controller networks with malicious code running on a node. One can see the unsecured system behave erratically when receiving invalid messages, whereas the Sancus system gracefully slows down and safely disengages.

Much has been written about the upcoming IoTpocalypse: the lack of security in critical infrastructure and general despair about the dismal state of easily exploitable embedded systems as they multiply and get connected to the internet. A project based on open-source building blocks and free-software ethos that attempts to provide a layer of integrity and deterministic behavior to microcontrollers should be lauded and considered by anyone building hardware applications where security and reliability are strong requirements.