Hardware Solutions To Highly-Adversarial Environments Part 3: Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), SGX, TrustZone and Hardware Security Tokens

This is end of my blog post series on cryptography with hardware. I’ve written about smart cards and secure elements in part 1 and about HSMs and TPMs in part 2.

Trusted Execution Environment (TEE)

So far, all of the hardware solutions we’ve talked about have been standalone secure hardware solutions (with the exceptions of smart cards which can be seen as tiny computers). Secure elements, HSMs, and TPMs can be seen as an additional computer.

(picture taken from The right secure hardware for your IoT deployment)

Let’s now talk about integrated secure hardware!

Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) is a concept that extends the instruction set of a processor to allow for programs to run in a separate secure environment. The separation between this secure environment and the ones we are used to deal with already (often called “rich” execution environment) is done via hardware. So what ends up happening is that modern CPUs run both a normal OS as well as a secure OS simultaneously. Both have their own set of registers but share most of the rest of the CPU architecture (and of course system). By using clever CPU-enforced logic, data from the secure world cannot be accessed from the normal world. Due to TEE being implemented directly on the main processor, not only does it mean a TEE is a faster and cheaper product than a TPM or secure element, it also comes for free in a lot of modern CPUs.

TEE like all other hardware solutions has been a concept developed independently by different vendors, and then a standard trying to play catch up (by Global Platform). The most known TEEs are Intel’s Software Guard Extensions (SGX) and ARM’s TrustZone. But there are many more like AMD PSP, RISC-V MultiZone and IBM Secure Service Container.

By design, since a TEE runs on the main CPU and can run any code given to it (in a separate environment called an “enclave”), it offers more functionality than secure elements, HSMs, TPMs (and TPM-like chips). For this reason TEEs are used in a wilder range of applications. We see it being used in clouds when clients don’t trust servers with their own data, multi-party computation (see CCF), to run smart contracts.

TEE’s goal is to first and foremost thwart software attacks. While the claimed software security seems to be really attractive, it is in practice hard to segregate execution while on the same chip as can attest the many software attacks against SGX:

Trustzone is not much better, Quarkslab has a list of paper successfully attacking it as well.

(picture taken from Certification of the Trusted Execution Environment – one step ahead for secure mobile devices)

In theory a TPM can be re-implemented in software only via a TEE (which was done by Microsoft) but one must be careful as again, TEE as a concept provides no resistance against hardware attacks besides the fact that things at this microscopic level are way too tiny and tightly packaged together to analyze without expensive equipment. But by default a TEE does not mean you’ll have a secure internal storage (you need to have a fused key that can’t be read to encrypt what you want to store), or a hardware random number generator, and other wished hardware features. But every manufacturers sure has different offers with different levels of physical security and tamper resistance when it comes to chip that supports TEE.

Hardware Security Tokens

Finally, hardware security tokens are keys that you can usually plug into your machine and that can do some cryptographic operations. For example yubikeys are small dongles that you can plug in the USB port of a laptop, and that will perform some cryptographic operations if you touch its yellow ring.

The word “token” in hardware security token comes from the fact that using it produces a “token” per-authentication request instead of sending the same credentials over and over again.

Yubikeys started as a way to provide 2nd factor authentication, usually in addition to a password, which an attacker can’t exploit in a phishing attack. The idea is that if an attacker calls your grandmother, and asks her to spell out the yubikey output, she won’t be able to. There is no output. Furthermore, modern yubikeys implement the FIDO 2 protocol which will not produce the correct response unless you are on the right webpage (if we are talking about usage for the web). The reason is that the protocol signs metadata that is linked to what’s in the url bar of your browser.

More recently laptops and mobile devices have started offering other ways to provide the same value as a hardware security token via their own secure module. For example Apple provides a biometric-protected (Touch ID or Face ID) authenticator via the secure enclave.

It’s not clear how much protection against hardware attacks your typical hardware security token has to implement since the compromise of one is not enough to authenticate as a user in most cases (unless you use one as single factor authentication). Yet yubikeys are known to have secure elements inside. Still, this doesn’t exclude software attacks if badly programmed. For example in 2013, a low-cost and non-intrusive side-channel attack managed to extract keys from a yubikey.

Cryptocurrency has similar dongles that will sign transactions for a user, but the threat model is different and they will usually have to authenticate the user in some ways and provide tamper resistance. Here is a picture of a Nano ledger.

As with any hardware solutions, attacks have been found there as well (for example one the trezor).

Conclusion

As a summary, this 3-part blog series surveys different techniques that exist to deal with physical attacks:

Smart cards are microcomputers that needs to be turned on by an external device like a payment terminal. They can run arbitrary java applications. Bank cards are smart cards for example.

are microcomputers that needs to be turned on by an external device like a payment terminal. They can run arbitrary java applications. Bank cards are smart cards for example. Secure elements are a generalization of smart cards, which rely on a set of Global Platform standards. SIM Cards are secure elements for example.

are a generalization of smart cards, which rely on a set of Global Platform standards. SIM Cards are secure elements for example. TPMs are re-packaged secure elements plugged on personal and enterprise computers’ motherboards. They follow a standardized API (by the Trusted Computing Group) that are used in a multitude of ways from measured/secure boot with FDE to remote attestation.

are re-packaged secure elements plugged on personal and enterprise computers’ motherboards. They follow a standardized API (by the Trusted Computing Group) that are used in a multitude of ways from measured/secure boot with FDE to remote attestation. HSMs can be seen as external and big secure elements for servers. They’re faster and more flexible. Seen mostly in data centers to store keys.

can be seen as external and big secure elements for servers. They’re faster and more flexible. Seen mostly in data centers to store keys. TEEs like TrustZone and SGX can be thought of secure elements implemented within the CPU. They are faster and cheaper but mostly provide resistance against software attacks unless augmented to be tamper-resistant. Most modern CPUs ship with TEEs and various level of defense against hardware attacks.

like TrustZone and SGX can be thought of secure elements implemented within the CPU. They are faster and cheaper but mostly provide resistance against software attacks unless augmented to be tamper-resistant. Most modern CPUs ship with TEEs and various level of defense against hardware attacks. Hardware Security Tokens are dongles like yubikeys that often repackage secure elements to provide a 2nd factor by implementing some authentication protocol (usually TOTP or FIDO2).

are dongles like yubikeys that often repackage secure elements to provide a 2nd factor by implementing some authentication protocol (usually TOTP or FIDO2). There are many more that I haven’t talked about. In reality vendors can do whatever they want. We’ve seen a lot of TPM-like chips. Apple has the secure enclave, Google has Titan, Microsoft has Pluton, Atmel for example sells “crypto elements”.

Keep in mind that no hardware solution is the panacea, you're only increasing the attack's cost. Against a sophisticated attacker all of that is pretty much useless. For this reason design your system so that one device compromised doesn't imply all devices are compromised. Even against normal adversaries, compromising the main operating system often means that you can make arbitrary calls to the secure element. Design your protocol to make sure that the secure element doesn't have to trust the caller by either verifying queries, or relying on an external trusted part, or by relying on a trusted remote party, or by being self-contained, etc. And after all of that, you still have to worry about side channel attacks :)

PS: thanks to Gabe Pike for the many discussions around TEE!