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1Trusted Board Boot
2==================
3
4The Trusted Board Boot (TBB) feature prevents malicious firmware from running on
5the platform by authenticating all firmware images up to and including the
6normal world bootloader. It does this by establishing a Chain of Trust using
7Public-Key-Cryptography Standards (PKCS).
8
9This document describes the design of Trusted Firmware-A (TF-A) TBB, which is an
10implementation of the `Trusted Board Boot Requirements (TBBR)`_ specification,
11Arm DEN0006D. It should be used in conjunction with the
12:ref:`Firmware Update (FWU)` design document, which implements a specific aspect
13of the TBBR.
14
15Chain of Trust
16--------------
17
18A Chain of Trust (CoT) starts with a set of implicitly trusted components. On
19the Arm development platforms, these components are:
20
21-  A SHA-256 hash of the Root of Trust Public Key (ROTPK). It is stored in the
22   trusted root-key storage registers.
23
24-  The BL1 image, on the assumption that it resides in ROM so cannot be
25   tampered with.
26
27The remaining components in the CoT are either certificates or boot loader
28images. The certificates follow the `X.509 v3`_ standard. This standard
29enables adding custom extensions to the certificates, which are used to store
30essential information to establish the CoT.
31
32In the TBB CoT all certificates are self-signed. There is no need for a
33Certificate Authority (CA) because the CoT is not established by verifying the
34validity of a certificate's issuer but by the content of the certificate
35extensions. To sign the certificates, the PKCS#1 SHA-256 with RSA Encryption
36signature scheme is used with a RSA key length of 2048 bits. Future version of
37TF-A will support additional cryptographic algorithms.
38
39The certificates are categorised as "Key" and "Content" certificates. Key
40certificates are used to verify public keys which have been used to sign content
41certificates. Content certificates are used to store the hash of a boot loader
42image. An image can be authenticated by calculating its hash and matching it
43with the hash extracted from the content certificate. The SHA-256 function is
44used to calculate all hashes. The public keys and hashes are included as
45non-standard extension fields in the `X.509 v3`_ certificates.
46
47The keys used to establish the CoT are:
48
49-  **Root of trust key**
50
51   The private part of this key is used to sign the BL2 content certificate and
52   the trusted key certificate. The public part is the ROTPK.
53
54-  **Trusted world key**
55
56   The private part is used to sign the key certificates corresponding to the
57   secure world images (SCP_BL2, BL31 and BL32). The public part is stored in
58   one of the extension fields in the trusted world certificate.
59
60-  **Non-trusted world key**
61
62   The private part is used to sign the key certificate corresponding to the
63   non secure world image (BL33). The public part is stored in one of the
64   extension fields in the trusted world certificate.
65
66-  **BL3-X keys**
67
68   For each of SCP_BL2, BL31, BL32 and BL33, the private part is used to
69   sign the content certificate for the BL3-X image. The public part is stored
70   in one of the extension fields in the corresponding key certificate.
71
72The following images are included in the CoT:
73
74-  BL1
75-  BL2
76-  SCP_BL2 (optional)
77-  BL31
78-  BL33
79-  BL32 (optional)
80
81The following certificates are used to authenticate the images.
82
83-  **BL2 content certificate**
84
85   It is self-signed with the private part of the ROT key. It contains a hash
86   of the BL2 image.
87
88-  **Trusted key certificate**
89
90   It is self-signed with the private part of the ROT key. It contains the
91   public part of the trusted world key and the public part of the non-trusted
92   world key.
93
94-  **SCP_BL2 key certificate**
95
96   It is self-signed with the trusted world key. It contains the public part of
97   the SCP_BL2 key.
98
99-  **SCP_BL2 content certificate**
100
101   It is self-signed with the SCP_BL2 key. It contains a hash of the SCP_BL2
102   image.
103
104-  **BL31 key certificate**
105
106   It is self-signed with the trusted world key. It contains the public part of
107   the BL31 key.
108
109-  **BL31 content certificate**
110
111   It is self-signed with the BL31 key. It contains a hash of the BL31 image.
112
113-  **BL32 key certificate**
114
115   It is self-signed with the trusted world key. It contains the public part of
116   the BL32 key.
117
118-  **BL32 content certificate**
119
120   It is self-signed with the BL32 key. It contains a hash of the BL32 image.
121
122-  **BL33 key certificate**
123
124   It is self-signed with the non-trusted world key. It contains the public
125   part of the BL33 key.
126
127-  **BL33 content certificate**
128
129   It is self-signed with the BL33 key. It contains a hash of the BL33 image.
130
131The SCP_BL2 and BL32 certificates are optional, but they must be present if the
132corresponding SCP_BL2 or BL32 images are present.
133
134Trusted Board Boot Sequence
135---------------------------
136
137The CoT is verified through the following sequence of steps. The system panics
138if any of the steps fail.
139
140-  BL1 loads and verifies the BL2 content certificate. The issuer public key is
141   read from the verified certificate. A hash of that key is calculated and
142   compared with the hash of the ROTPK read from the trusted root-key storage
143   registers. If they match, the BL2 hash is read from the certificate.
144
145   .. note::
146      The matching operation is platform specific and is currently
147      unimplemented on the Arm development platforms.
148
149-  BL1 loads the BL2 image. Its hash is calculated and compared with the hash
150   read from the certificate. Control is transferred to the BL2 image if all
151   the comparisons succeed.
152
153-  BL2 loads and verifies the trusted key certificate. The issuer public key is
154   read from the verified certificate. A hash of that key is calculated and
155   compared with the hash of the ROTPK read from the trusted root-key storage
156   registers. If the comparison succeeds, BL2 reads and saves the trusted and
157   non-trusted world public keys from the verified certificate.
158
159The next two steps are executed for each of the SCP_BL2, BL31 & BL32 images.
160The steps for the optional SCP_BL2 and BL32 images are skipped if these images
161are not present.
162
163-  BL2 loads and verifies the BL3x key certificate. The certificate signature
164   is verified using the trusted world public key. If the signature
165   verification succeeds, BL2 reads and saves the BL3x public key from the
166   certificate.
167
168-  BL2 loads and verifies the BL3x content certificate. The signature is
169   verified using the BL3x public key. If the signature verification succeeds,
170   BL2 reads and saves the BL3x image hash from the certificate.
171
172The next two steps are executed only for the BL33 image.
173
174-  BL2 loads and verifies the BL33 key certificate. If the signature
175   verification succeeds, BL2 reads and saves the BL33 public key from the
176   certificate.
177
178-  BL2 loads and verifies the BL33 content certificate. If the signature
179   verification succeeds, BL2 reads and saves the BL33 image hash from the
180   certificate.
181
182The next step is executed for all the boot loader images.
183
184-  BL2 calculates the hash of each image. It compares it with the hash obtained
185   from the corresponding content certificate. The image authentication succeeds
186   if the hashes match.
187
188The Trusted Board Boot implementation spans both generic and platform-specific
189BL1 and BL2 code, and in tool code on the host build machine. The feature is
190enabled through use of specific build flags as described in
191:ref:`Build Options`.
192
193On the host machine, a tool generates the certificates, which are included in
194the FIP along with the boot loader images. These certificates are loaded in
195Trusted SRAM using the IO storage framework. They are then verified by an
196Authentication module included in TF-A.
197
198The mechanism used for generating the FIP and the Authentication module are
199described in the following sections.
200
201Authentication Framework
202------------------------
203
204The authentication framework included in TF-A provides support to implement
205the desired trusted boot sequence. Arm platforms use this framework to
206implement the boot requirements specified in the
207`Trusted Board Boot Requirements (TBBR)`_ document.
208
209More information about the authentication framework can be found in the
210:ref:`Authentication Framework & Chain of Trust` document.
211
212Certificate Generation Tool
213---------------------------
214
215The ``cert_create`` tool is built and runs on the host machine as part of the
216TF-A build process when ``GENERATE_COT=1``. It takes the boot loader images
217and keys as inputs (keys must be in PEM format) and generates the
218certificates (in DER format) required to establish the CoT. New keys can be
219generated by the tool in case they are not provided. The certificates are then
220passed as inputs to the ``fiptool`` utility for creating the FIP.
221
222The certificates are also stored individually in the in the output build
223directory.
224
225The tool resides in the ``tools/cert_create`` directory. It uses the OpenSSL SSL
226library version to generate the X.509 certificates. The specific version of the
227library that is required is given in the :ref:`Prerequisites` document.
228
229Instructions for building and using the tool can be found at
230:ref:`tools_build_cert_create`.
231
232--------------
233
234*Copyright (c) 2015-2019, Arm Limited and Contributors. All rights reserved.*
235
236.. _X.509 v3: https://tools.ietf.org/rfc/rfc5280.txt
237.. _Trusted Board Boot Requirements (TBBR): https://developer.arm.com/docs/den0006/latest/trusted-board-boot-requirements-client-tbbr-client-armv8-a
238