Fobnail Project detailed description

The Fobnail Project is an implementation of the iTurtle.

The iTurtle concept presents a portable device that is a security USB stick, which provides platform trustworthiness checks. The result of the integrity check must be presented in an easy, visible way - for example, with the LED. We (3mdeb) want to provide the open-source reference implementation of the iTurtle device.

Our goal is to create a scalable, flexible implementation that will be the core building block for future security solutions (created by the community) based on DRTM payloads. The Fobnail architecture concept is based on the IEFT specification - Remote ATtestation ProcedureS (RATS).

The architecture supports Fobnail Token provisioning, remote and local Platform (Attester) provisioning, and attestation. Currently, there is no open source implementation of the USB attestation device.

During the Fobnail Token provisioning, the Platform Owner creates the identity and encryption certificates that are used by the Attester to the Fobnail Token verification. The Fobnail Token verifies the Platform Owner certificate chain and generates the identity and encryption key pair. The Fobnail Token obtains the metadata (CPU serial) and conveys the encrypted public key parts and metadata to the Platform Owner. The received data is decrypted, and the Platform Owner creates identity and encryption certificates that are provided to the Fobnail Token.

The Platform provisioning is split into remote provisioning (which is out of NLNet grant application scope) and local provisioning. In the case of local provisioning, the Fobnail Token takes the Platform Owner role. The Fobnail Token receives the Attester metadata (CPU serial, MAC, and EK certificate checksum) and generates the checksum. The metadata checksum is used for the Platform verification during the attestation. The Fobnail Token uses default policies during the local attestation.

The attestation architecture is based on the Reference Interaction Model for Challenge-Response-based Remote Attestation (CHARRA). This is the IEFT attestation standard, which specifies the communication between the Attester and the Verifier (Fobnail Token). The Fobnail Token provides the ability to perform attestation in the absence of any connectivity. During the attestation development, we will use the proof-of-concept CHARRA implementation of the proposed architecture, which is developed by the Fraunhofer Institute.

To demonstrate the capabilities of the implemented solution, we will create the example use case that uses the TrenchBoot, of which a significant part of AMD support was sponsored by NLNet as OpenDRTM, to verify the integrity of the system firmware, D-RTM Configuration Environment (DCE), Linux Kernel, and initrd.

The main use case that will be presented as a demonstration is boot time attestation. The Fobnail Token will be used to verify an operating system during boot time. We will run inside DLME (Dynamically Launched Measured Environment) the Zephyr RTOS, which will check if the measurements of the operating system meet the reference measurements in the Fobnail Token. If the OS is compromised, the Fobnail Token warns the user, and Zephyr RTOS prevents a platform from booting.

The Fobnail Project has the potential to scale up in the future. The Fobnail architecture could be adapted for devices using different buses than USB. We would like to implement another DRTM-based use case (that is out of the scope of this grant application), for example, runtime OS attestation. The Fobnail could be used to check if the runtime state of the platform is trusted. It could be based on one of the existing projects, such as Linux Kernel Runtime Guard. It could be useful to check the integrity of the Linux Kernel before performing sensitive operations.