.png){kind=small}
If you haven’t read introductory blog post yet, I strongly recommend to do it before proceeding here. We have presented our motivation, project’s overview concept and goals there. Generally speaking, we will be introducing new issues according to project’s state over time. If you want to keep up with project development, stay tuned and always try to catch up missed articles.
Those articles will not always be strictly technical. Therefore, if you think some topics should be elaborated, feel free to ask us a question.
In this article, I will explain how the project is built. Mostly, what hardware, firmware and software components we are using. The most essential parts of system will be also described in details. It’s important to understand their role, so you will be able to reproduce the environment smoothly and consciously.
Testing platform
As you already know, our solution is built for AMD processors. Therefore, for tests we use suitable platforms. Our hardware infrastructure is still being expanded. Eventually, there will be few more devices with different characteristic. For now, we use PC Engines apu2 which has AMD GX-412TC processor. We use connection via serial port, so every relevant output will be presented in form of logs. What is important, our platform is equipped with TPM module which is obligatory in this project. Make sure you have it on your platform too.
Operating system
To better understand next section, first I will introduce operating system which
we use. Our choice is NixOS which is a Linux
distribution based on unusual (but reliable) package management. You can install
tools from official packages or build your own ones. Second feature will be
strongly utilized in entire project. Later, I will show you how to build custom
package on flashrom example.
Of course, you can use any other Linux distribution. However, every procedure will be carried out by us in NixOS. If you won’t have all dedicated tools and (supported? compatible?) configuration, we can’t provide full reliability.
NixOS installation
Now, I will guide through installation of NixOS. After it, you should have an operating system in a default configuration. Later, I will show you how to customize it in a runtime.
Important: NixOS installation is not interactive as in most Linux distributions (e.g. Debian). Therefore, pay attention to typed commands and configurations!
-
Download minimal installer image from the website.
-
Flash USB drive with the image.
-
Insert USB drive on the target platform and choose proper boot option.
-
In boot menu press
taband add serial console parameters:1console=ttyS0,115200 earlyprintk=serial,ttyS0,115200 -
Press enter and you will see following bootlog:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64ott//iinniittrrdd early console in extract_kernel input_data: 0x00000000023fc3b1 input_len: 0x0000000000404c90 output: 0x0000000001000000 output_len: 0x00000000017d8030 kernel_total_size: 0x000000000142c000 trampoline_32bit: 0x000000000009d000 booted via startup_32() Physical KASLR using RDTSC... Virtual KASLR using RDTSC... Decompressing Linux... Parsing ELF... Performing relocations... done. Booting the kernel. [ 0.000000] Linux version 4.19.107 (nixbld@localhost) (gcc version 8.3.0 (GCC)) #1-NixOS SMP Fri Feb 28 15:39:01 UTC 2020 [ 0.000000] Command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/bzImage init=/nix/store/ph9hjng3mwwsnnd20pq364fay8baqm6x-nixos-system-nixos-19.09.2201.7d31bbceaa1/init root=LABEL=NIXOS_ISO console=ttyS0,115200 earlyprintkd (...) <<< NixOS Stage 1 >>> loading module loop... loading module vfat... loading module nls_cp437... loading module nls_iso8859-1... loading module fuse... loading module dm_mod... running udev... kbd_mode: KDSKBMODE: Inappropriate ioctl for device Gstarting device mapper and LVM... mounting tmpfs on /... waiting for device /dev/root to appear... mounting /dev/root on /iso... mounting /mnt-root/iso/nix-store.squashfs on /nix/.ro-store... mounting tmpfs on /nix/.rw-store... mounting unionfs on /nix/store... <<< NixOS Stage 2 >>> running activation script... setting up /etc... unpacking the NixOS/Nixpkgs sources... created 1 symlinks in user environment ln: failed to create symbolic link '/root/.nix-defexpr/channels/channels': Read-only file system starting systemd... Welcome to NixOS 19.09.2201.7d31bbceaa1 (Loris)! [ OK ] Created slice system-getty.slice. (...) [ OK ] Started Login Service. <<< Welcome to NixOS 19.09.2201.7d31bbceaa1 (x86_64) - ttyS0 >>> The "nixos" and "root" accounts have empty passwords. Type `sudo systemctl start sshd` to start the SSH daemon. You then must set a password for either "root" or "nixos" with `passwd` to be able to login. Run `nixos-help` or press <Alt-F8> for the NixOS manual. nixos login: nixos (automatic login) -
Create legacy boot partition
Be careful and choose correct /dev/sdX device. In our case it is
sda, which is SSD disk.Create a MBR partition table
1parted /dev/sda -- mklabel msdosAdd the root partition. This will fill the the disk except for the end part, where the swap will live.
1parted /dev/sda -- mkpart primary 1MiB -8GiBAdd swap partition
1parted /dev/sda -- mkpart primary linux-swap -8GiB 100% -
Format partitions
sda1
1mkfs.ext4 -L nixos /dev/sda1sda2 (swap)
1mkswap -L swap /dev/sda2 -
Mount partition
1mount /dev/disk/by-label/nixos /mnt -
Generate initial configuration:
1nixos-generate-config --root /mntAbove command will create
configuration.nixfile. It contains all default configuration options according to which NixOS will be installed. -
Uncomment following line in
configuration.nixfile.1 2$ vim /mnt/etc/nixos/configuration.nix boot.loader.grub.device = "/dev/sda"; -
Add boot kernel parameters for serial connection:
1boot.kernelParams = [ "console=ttyS0,115200 earlyprintk=serial,ttyS0,115200" ]; -
Install NixOS based on config (it will take a few minutes)
1nixos-install -
Set password for root.
-
Reboot OS. (Now you can remove installation media)
If above procedure was successful, NixOS is installed in default configuration. Boot to system and play around to check if everything is correct. If yes, let’s move on to package manager and system customization.
NixOS package installation
As already mentioned, your NixOS is now in default configuration. It means it
have already installed only basic tools and applications. Additional ones can be
added using package manager. Most of the packages could be found in
nixpkgs library. All are listed in
all-packages.nix.
Alternatively you can use the command:
|
|
As you can see most tools are presented in nixpkgs. However, there is
possibility to build your own (custom ones), based on github repository. Let’s
try to this with custom flashrom and
3mdeb github fork.
-
First, clone the
nixpkgsrepo. Without it, you won’t have access to any package.1git clone git@github.com:NixOS/nixpkgs.git -
Change directory to
nixpkgsand create the package directory for new flashrom. We named itflashrom2, asflashromalready exists.1 2cd nixpkgs mkdir pkgs/tools/misc/flashrom2 -
Move to the
flashrom2directory and create adefault.nixconfig file.1 2 3cd pkgs/tools/misc/flashrom2 touch default.nix vim default.nix -
Fill
default.nixfile with following contentdefault.nixis a recipe for building a package. It contains all dependencies, package source and description.1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31{ lib , stdenv , fetchurl , meson , ninja , pkgconfig , libftdi1 , libusb1 , pciutils }: stdenv.mkDerivation rec { pname = "flashrom2"; version = "2.0"; src = builtins.fetchGit { url = "https://github.com/3mdeb/flashrom.git"; ref = "wip"; rev = "5f164cc28fdc055c272d21c60a0a32dc23d29e3b"; }; nativeBuildInputs = [ meson pkgconfig ninja ]; buildInputs = [ libftdi1 libusb1 pciutils ]; meta = with lib; { homepage = http://www.flashrom.org; description = "Utility for reading, writing, erasing and verifying flash ROM chips"; license = licenses.gpl2; platforms = platforms.all; }; } -
Build
flashrom21nix-build -A flashrom2nix-buildcommand builds any package which is added or already exists innixpkgslibrary. -
Add
flashrom2to NixOS profile to create symlinks.1 2 3 4nix-env -f . -iA flashrom2 installing 'flashrom2-2.0' building '/nix/store/hbxi8l93x2qv3kzg7kjpfaa6pmkij48f-user-environment.drv'... created 21 symlinks in user environment
You have just built your first package in NixOS. Moreover, it is your custom
build! However, as you can see entire process is non-trivial. Essential part of
each package is stdenv library. Its
documentation
should clarify some issues. However, it is good to experiment with package
manager on your own. Good point to start are already existing packages and their
default.nix files.
You may wonder why do we build our own tools, when most of them are available in
default nixpkgs. Answer is simple - we have possibility to build not only
tools, but also many other software and firmware components… You will learn
more about it in next section.
Firmware
As I mentioned in previous section, with NixOS we have possibility to customize our platform (both firmware and operating system). Before, we do that, I need to introduce some concepts. The better you understand them, the more awareness about security of your platform you will have and better understand the purpose of entire project. Let’s break our entire system into following main parts. They are listed in order of execution when the platform is booted, so you can also see the flow and relations between them.
BIOS
Our solution is open-source, so we also use such firmware (BIOS) - coreboot. Also, as we are maintainers of coreboot for PC Engines platforms, we use PC Engines coreboot and its mainline release. Every change appears there, so it is definitely place where you will find up-to-date firmware. I won’t describe coreboot itself here. What you need to know, it is first code which is running during boot process. It initializes all hardware components on platform.
GRUB
When coreboot ends its work, a bootloader comes in. We use GRUB. Its task is to boot operating system. Normally, if NixOS is installed on hard disk, GRUB loads it to RAM. Being more precise, Linux kernel and initrd are being loaded. However, that operation is slightly different when we enable DRTM. As it is main goal of our project, let’s take a look a little bit closer on it.
We prepared extension module called slaunch. When DRTM is enabled, slaunch
executes AMD’s dedicated machine instruction SKINIT. Treat it as ‘pre-DRTM’
operation. It prepares all components and jump to secure loader -
Landing Zone.
Landing Zone (LZ)
LZ has 2 main tasks: measure Linux kernel and then run it. If you wonder, when measurements are done, then you have just found out. Without LZ, DRTM doesn’t exist. Although it seems inconspicuous, it does fundamental job in secure boot process.
Linux kernel
Linux kernel is a core of all Linux based operating systems. Actually, it is operating system without any additional applications. It can be modified to given platform by including and excluding particular drivers, called modules. In general, it is done to limit size of kernel image and adjust its performance. In Trenchboot Secure Launch process it performs additional operations - makes some measurements. But more about it, we will discuss later.
initrd
initrd stands for initial ramdisk. It is an image used by bootloader to mount initial file system in memory. Also, that image contains modules which will be loaded by Linux kernel.
Bring it all together
I have mentioned and described all parts of system which you need to know, to understand TrenchBoot and DRTM. But how they are related and how to build such system? I said that package manager in NixOS is very important and we will commonly use it. And now I want to show you how.
First, we have ‘clean’ NixOS operating system installed on hard drive. It has default Linux kernel and initrd. From GRUB we can boot it and… that’s it. No DRTM, no measurements and no security. But, with custom package management, we can enable DRTM and prepare all components directly from operating system. That’s what we did. We have prepared, in separate packages, all elements mentioned below:
- GRUB-trenchboot - it updates GRUB, so it boots
slaunchand in consequence LZ - LZ-trenchboot - it adds LZ which measures and runs Linux kernel (enables DRTM)
- linux-kernel-trenchboot - customized NixOS kernel which also makes some measurements
- initrd-trenchboot - customized initrd
Installing those packages will create a target system with enabled DRTM. How to do this in practice and verify if it really works will be discussed in next article.
Summary
This article was mostly theoretical introduction to a project. There were a lot of knowledge and new concepts. However, it is necessary to struggle through it at the beginning, so it will be a lot easier later. In next blog post, I will show you a real working example. You will see how to configure NixOS and verify DRTM. Of course, everything in reproducible way, so you can perform it too!
If you think we can help in improving the security of your firmware or you
looking for someone who can boost your product by leveraging advanced features
of used hardware platform, feel free to
book a call with us or
drop us email to contact<at>3mdeb<dot>com. If you are interested in similar
content feel free to sign up for our newsletter
