Hi all,
We've created a change, which is using original CMSIS headers in TF-M. Current patch is only for arm/mps3/an552 platform. Our plan is to create a public review only for this (which will NOT be merged), and after the review, we would like to extend this patch to all of the platforms.
The main changes in the chain:
- copy and zero_table size fix in the GNU linker scripts and initial startup code
- Removed __INITIAL_SP and __STACK_LIMIT patch form gcc and iar cmsis files, NS linker scripts using CMSIS style naming, the secure and bl2 build's linker scripts remains untouched (ARMCLANG style naming, __INITIAL_SP and __STACK_LIMIT patched with cmsis_stack_override interface library)
- NS process stack removed from NS linkers (PSP)
- Common startup file for bl2 and ns builds
- Add original cmsis headers, updated system and startup files
- Stack sealing done twice, once from startup (to resemble CMSIS startup template) and once from TF-M secure main
Feedback is welcome:
https://review.trustedfirmware.org/q/topic:%2522use-original-cmsis-headers%…
David Hazi
Hi George,
The ITS without encryption is not a compromised RoT. In the PSA Secure Storage API spec, the PSA Internal Trust Storage aims at providing a place for devices to store their most intimate secrets. Also
“”””””””””””””””””””
1. The storage underlying the PSA Internal Trusted Storage Service MUST be protected from read and modification by attackers with physical access to the device.
2. The storage underlying the PSA Internal Trusted Storage Service MUST be protected from direct read or write access from software partitions outside of the PSA Root of Trust (PRoT).
“”””””””””””””””””””
So, for internal trusted storage service, it requires the underlying storage itself should provide being read or write protection. The storage area should be a “trusted” area. Does the storage area on your device meet this requirement? Is the memory physically isolated? If not, I wonder why not uses the Protected Storage service instead?
For the design of adding encryption in ITS, in the PS partition, the `iv` and the encrypted object data are stored with the object file while the tag of each object is stored with the object table file. So, if encrypt the PS object in the ITS file system, how the PS partition get the `tag` of each object? After a rough thought, I think probably a standalone encryption for ITS is more reasonable.
As this is a relatively “big topic”, would you like to hold a discussion on the TF-M Tech forum if it is not limited by confidential information? The next Tech forum will be hold on this Thursday 3:00 PM UTC time.
Regards,
Sherry Zhang
From: Vasilakis, Georgios <georgios.vasilakis(a)nordicsemi.no<mailto:georgios.vasilakis@nordicsemi.no>>
Sent: Friday, September 24, 2021 8:52 PM
To: Sherry Zhang <Sherry.Zhang2(a)arm.com<mailto:Sherry.Zhang2@arm.com>>; tf-m(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org<mailto:tf-m@lists.trustedfirmware.org>
Cc: nd <nd(a)arm.com<mailto:nd@arm.com>>
Subject: Re: [TF-M] Supporting encryption with ITS
Hello Sherry,
Thank you for your input!
1. Our threat model is more concerned about attacks which can happen very early in the boot process, I think. A completely compromised RoT is not in our threat model.
2. I see that, ITS is supposed to store small objects. The storage overhead of adding encryption will be probably bigger than 20 bytes I think but the intention is to have this only as a configuration, not as the default option.
3. Agreed, a HAL API should be used for this.
Do you have any opinion on the design of it? Do you think that it adds value to do try to use a common design for the object handling of both PS and ITS or is it better to have it as a standalone thing for the ITS.
Regards,
George
________________________________
From: Sherry Zhang <Sherry.Zhang2(a)arm.com<mailto:Sherry.Zhang2@arm.com>>
Sent: Friday, September 24, 2021 11:58 AM
To: Vasilakis, Georgios <georgios.vasilakis(a)nordicsemi.no<mailto:georgios.vasilakis@nordicsemi.no>>; tf-m(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org<mailto:tf-m@lists.trustedfirmware.org> <tf-m(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org<mailto:tf-m@lists.trustedfirmware.org>>
Cc: nd <nd(a)arm.com<mailto:nd@arm.com>>
Subject: RE: [TF-M] Supporting encryption with ITS
Hi George,
Some comments from my side:
1. Internal trusted storage is part of the Root of Trust domain. If ITS storage device is attacked, then the code flash where the PSA Rot SP locates may also be attacked. Does the thread model of your system require the encryption in ITS?
2. The ITS service is intended to be used to interface to a small piece of storage. Encryption would increase the context for each ITS file. For example, similarly to PS object context, the `IV` which is used in encryption as well as the generated `tag` should be added into each file context. They total together can be about more than 20 bytes.
3. If the encryption is mandatory/ necessary required by the thread model of your system, as discussed, the PSA crypto service should not be called to avoid the circular. I think a HAL API for encryption may be created in ITS for platform implementation defined encryption/decryption.
Regards,
Sherry Zhang
From: TF-M <tf-m-bounces(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org<mailto:tf-m-bounces@lists.trustedfirmware.org>> On Behalf Of Vasilakis, Georgios via TF-M
Sent: Thursday, September 23, 2021 10:47 PM
To: Gyorgy Szing <Gyorgy.Szing(a)arm.com<mailto:Gyorgy.Szing@arm.com>>; Fabian Schmidt <fabian.schmidt(a)nxp.com<mailto:fabian.schmidt@nxp.com>>
Cc: nd <nd(a)arm.com<mailto:nd@arm.com>>; tf-m(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org<mailto:tf-m@lists.trustedfirmware.org>
Subject: Re: [TF-M] Supporting encryption with ITS
Hey Gyorgy,
These are very valuable comments! I am aware of the circular dependency issue because the PSA apis are using the ITS as a storage backend. This, as you said, can be circumvented by using a software crypto library or an implementation specific API. So, for the encryption a flexible API can be used which can allow externals to use their own function calls.
Regarding the key storage, this is what I had in mind as well, using derived keys from the HUK. So that we don't need to store anything but the crypto metadata. Adding another layer of storage will raise more issues, I think.
________________________________
From: Gyorgy Szing <Gyorgy.Szing(a)arm.com<mailto:Gyorgy.Szing@arm.com>>
Sent: Thursday, September 23, 2021 4:30 PM
To: Fabian Schmidt <fabian.schmidt(a)nxp.com<mailto:fabian.schmidt@nxp.com>>; Vasilakis, Georgios <georgios.vasilakis(a)nordicsemi.no<mailto:georgios.vasilakis@nordicsemi.no>>
Cc: tf-m(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org<mailto:tf-m@lists.trustedfirmware.org> <tf-m(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org<mailto:tf-m@lists.trustedfirmware.org>>; nd <nd(a)arm.com<mailto:nd@arm.com>>
Subject: RE: [TF-M] Supporting encryption with ITS
Hi,
AFAIK the main reason for ITS not using encryption is the problem of circular dependency. ITS is used by crypto SP for key storage, so how will crypto fetch the key from ITS to decrypt ITS? You could use a software crypto implementation (another mbed-tls instance) in ITS, but where would you safely store the keys? If you have a two layer ITS, one for only storing the keys for the second instance, and a second, encrypted one, then you end up with something like ITS and PS.
You may not need a full blown on-chip FLASH device for ITS. If you have a HUK available, you can derive the same SP specific keys from that at each boot, and store these in RAM backed ITS. You won’t be able to store other keys in ITS in a persistent way of course, but for that you can use PS. Well, something along these lines.
Perhaps the TF-M team could help better if you could share some details on why your customer would need encrypted ITS. (A PSA for Cortex-A (TS) maintainer chiming in to a “not his business” discussion here 😉 )
/George
From: TF-M <tf-m-bounces(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org<mailto:tf-m-bounces@lists.trustedfirmware.org>> On Behalf Of Fabian Schmidt via TF-M
Sent: September 23, 2021 15:51
To: Vasilakis, Georgios <georgios.vasilakis(a)nordicsemi.no<mailto:georgios.vasilakis@nordicsemi.no>>
Cc: tf-m(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org<mailto:tf-m@lists.trustedfirmware.org>
Subject: Re: [TF-M] Supporting encryption with ITS
Hi George,
I’m wondering if that would add value. To my understanding, ITS was never designed to be encrypted because of the way it’s supposed to be set up. (It’s Internal Trusted Storage.) I believe best practice is to place it in a “trusted” location, one that is ideally only accessible from Secure world, and also ideally on-die. If you then restrict outside access to the internal flash (JTAG, flash programmer ports,…), you’re pretty golden, in that no unauthorized party should be able to read from or write to the ITS.*
Let me know if I misunderstand anything about ITS or TrustZone, but that’s my view. Maybe I’m painting an idealized picture.
Greetings,
Fabian Schmidt
* at least short of a sophisticated physical attack or finding some loophole in TrustZone…
From: TF-M <tf-m-bounces(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org<mailto:tf-m-bounces@lists.trustedfirmware.org>> On Behalf Of Vasilakis, Georgios via TF-M
Sent: Donnerstag, 23. September 2021 15:28
To: tf-m(a)lists.trustedfirmware.org<mailto:tf-m@lists.trustedfirmware.org>
Subject: [EXT] [TF-M] Supporting encryption with ITS
Caution: EXT Email
Hey all,
Lately the requirement for an encrypted ITS solution is being asked from our customers and I would like to have a discussion here on how we can design this in a reasonable way. The first thought that came to my mind was to add the functionality to the ITS flash-fs layer. This layer contains file metadata in the its_file_meta_t structure and it should be possible to expand this to include additional crypto metadata (conditionally). This seems to be the less invasive change to me, even though it will introduce some increased memory usage since supporting encryption will mean that we cannot read the data in chunks anymore, we will have to use static buffers.
At the same time, I looked at the PS partition since I knew that it has support for encryption. I believe that some core concepts of both solutions have similarities even though the code is quite different. For example, a file in ITS is similar to an object in PS and the (linear) list of file metadata in ITS is similar to the concept of the object table in PS. So, I think that it should be possible to design some generic-enough APIs that we can use for both the ITS and PS. Even though this will require some major refactoring in both partitions, it will decrease the code of these services which will probably decrease maintenance later.
What are your thoughts on this?
Regards,
George
Hello,
Recently we discussed the movement of relevant options into C header files as a potential configuration improvement.
By this mail thread, I would like to provoke discussion on what else we are lacking in TF-M configurability and thoughts to make it better.
Please share your ideas to review them in the upcoming tech forum.
Thanks,
Anton
Hello,
TF-M has many options to configure. All of them are declared as a CMake variables and many of them translated to compiler definitions later.
Since the idea of TF-M configuration via config header file(s) was warmly received on the last tech forum I would like to check with community opinion on such hypothetical move: Configure TF-M via definitions in header files while leave CMake for a building control only.
Please share your thoughts, opinions and the possible dependencies.
Thanks,
Anton
Hi All :
I'm developing Flash Driver for TF-M AN524 demo , and trobuled by some code logic .
It's that :
For , AN524 , PS storage Area is redirect to BRAM , so PS area related read and write can be done using memcpy without Flash driver being implementened .
see : platform/ext/target/arm/mps3/an524/cmsis_driver/Driver_Flash.c
/* Redirecting PS storage to BRAM */
if (addr >= FLASH_REDIRECT_BASE && addr <= FLASH_REDIRECT_LIMIT) {
start_addr = FLASH_REDIRECT_DEST + (addr - FLASH_REDIRECT_BASE);
/* PS Flash is emulated over BRAM. use memcpy function. */
memcpy((void *)start_addr, data, cnt);
} else {
/* Flash driver for QSPI is not ready */
return ARM_DRIVER_ERROR_UNSUPPORTED;
}
My question is : What the purpose of "else" branch above ?
After I implement QSPI driver , in "if" branch , I remove redirect operation , and use Flash Write APIs to replace memcpy func. Then , shoud "else" branch be removed?
Or , should I put Flash write driver in "else" branch , and keep "if" branch the same with origion?
Best regards,
Jidong Mei
TF-M includes platform/ext/cmsis, which is CMSIS v5.9.0 with some TF-M-specific changes.
Looking at the history for that directory, it seems that we periodically update it and have to re-apply the TF-M-specific changes (which looks to be the naming of the stack and the copy table size).
I'm wondering whether there's a plan to either push the TF-M changes into upstream CMSIS or to change TF-M so that they're not needed? It would be nice to just pull CMSIS from upstream like we do with other external libraries...
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Hello all,
I made a patch (https://review.trustedfirmware.org/c/TF-M/trusted-firmware-m/+/16214) that reorganize interaction between ITS partition, ITS file system and ITS flash driver.
1. ITS flash driver interface is decoupled from ITS file system.
2. ITS flash driver interface isn't dependent on upper layers like ITS FS or ITS.
3. ITS flash driver emulated in RAM (its_flash_ram) can be used without CMSIS flash driver even in production environment if needed.
4. Target can provide own implementation of ITS flash driver without implementing CMSIS flash driver. Which can be more flexible or simple in some cases.
5. Allocation of ITS flash driver instance by ITS partition is not dependent on lower layers like CMSIS driver. ITS partition uses abstract flash driver interface to bind ITS file system and driver instance.
This changes gives following benefits.
1. Vendors can provide ITS flash driver without need to create an intermediate CMSIS flash driver.
2. It's possible to implement ITS encryption by adding a new ITS flash driver that performs encryption and uses existing drivers (NOR, NAND, RAM, platform specific) as the storage backend.
3. It's possible to use ITS file system + ITS encryption driver (b) for Protected Storage directly without additional context switching during access to PS file system handled by ITS partition. I think it should improve performance of PS.
4. Use ITS file system directly in application specific custom partitions by allocating ITS file system context and ITS flash driver.
Best regards,
Roman.
Hi everyone,
From what I see manifest lists (e.g. tools/tfm_manifest_list.yaml) describe partitions, but "name" field there (which is a description of the partition) uses "Service" word, for example:
"name": "Protected Storage Service",
Shouldn't this be "name": "Protected Storage Partition" ?
Why do TFM uses Service when describing the Partition?
Regards,
Bohdan Hunko
Cypress Semiconductor Ukraine
Engineer
CSUKR CSS ICW SW FW
Mobile: +38099 50 19 714
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