Embedded Security and Hardware Hacking

Team Non-zero Exit

July 2020

During this summer program, I learned about cryptographic protocol attacks, JTAG/UART probing, side-channel analysis/fault-injection, and navigating through the BearSSL library in C. For our final project we were tasked to "design and implement a system to support secure firmware distribution for automotive control." I collaborated with three other students for this project and hacked into systems developed my other teams.

Full Project Description

Github Repository

Full Slide Presentation

Our Protocol using AES Encryption in GCM and HMAC

bl_build tool generates the IV, key for encryption, and key for HMAC
fw_protect tool encrypts, generates HMAC, tags the metadata and firmware
- Metadata holds version number of firmware and size of the firmware being installed
fw_update tool construct frames, or in other terms, “packages” the data
Bootloader checks HMAC and tags, decrypts firmware, checks firmware version and either installs firmware or terminates installation