The story behind Genode's TrustZone demo on the USB Armory Dec 08, 2015Our latest article provides a look behind the scenes of the development of Genode's support for the USB Armory platform. The USB Armory is a computer in the form of a USB stick. It normally runs Linux. But thanks to the ARM TrustZone capabilities of the device, it is possible to run Genode behind the back of Linux. This is useful for shielding sensitive information like cryptographic keys from Linux by exposing it to Genode only and thereby drastically reducing the attack surface. Even in the event Linux gets compromised, e.g., by a vulnerability in the USB stack, the secrets remain protected. The article "The story behind Genode's TrustZone demo on the USB Armory" presents the adventurous story behind enabling this scenario. The biggest challenge was splitting the hardware platform into two worlds while maintaining the full functionality of Linux. The article goes on to explain the interplay between the secure world (Genode) and the normal world (Linux). Furthermore, it provides all the pointers needed to reproduce the scenario. Read the article... |
