SentinelBoot - A demonstrative secure bootloader

This repository is the basis for a final year project at The University of Manchester, see thesis. SentinelBoot is a demonstrative project to improve memory safety through both safe principles and the Rust programming language; additionally, SentinelBoot uses public-key cryptography to verify the kernel's hash before booting.

SentinelBoot also supports the use of the RISC-V vector cryptography extension.

Build

To build locally the use of the Docker container is recommended and will automatically be invoked by the Makefile. The default target is qemu which is built for running under QEMU without the use of global memory allocation or vector cryptography.

• The target can be changed by specifying BSP=<target>
• Debug printing can be enabled by DEBUG=y
• Using Docker for building and running can be disabled by DOCKER=n
• Clearing the terminal on build invocation can be disabled by CLEAR=n

Target	Board	Features
qemu	QEMU
qemu_vector	QEMU	Vector Cryptography
unmatched	HiFive Unmatched Rev B
visionfive	StarFive VisionFive 2

Setup

To run SentinelBoot involves some setup due to the need for a tftp server; however, setup may include the following. After which QEMU will be able to pull the SentinelBoot binary, keys, linux binary, dtb, and rootfs from the server.

Setup dhcpd

apt install isc-dhcp-server -y
echo "auto eth1
iface eth1 inet static
        address 192.168.0.1
        netmask 255.255.255.0" > /etc/network/interfaces
echo "INTERFACESv4=\"eth1\"" > /etc/defaults/isc-dhcp-server
echo "subnet 192.168.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
        interface br0;
        authorative;
        host vision-five {
                hardware ethernet 6c:cf:39:00:1d:11;
                fixed-address 192.168.0.2;
                next-server 192.168.0.1;
                filename Image;
        }
        host qemu {
                hardware ethernet 52:55:00:d1:55:01;
                fixed-address 192.168.0.3;
                next-server 192.168.0.1;
                filename Image;
        }
}" > /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf
ifconfig eth1 up
ifconfig eth1 192.168.0.1
systemctl restart isc-dhcp-server

Setup tftp

apt install tftpd-hpa -y
echo "TFTP_USERNAME=\"tftp\"
TFTP_DIRECTORY=\"/tftpboot/boot\"
TFTP_ADDRESS=\"192.168.0.1:69\"
TFTP_OPTIONS=\"--ipv4 --secure --create\"" > /etc/default/tftpd-hpa
mkdir -p /tftpboot/boot
chown tftp:tftp /tftpboot/boot
/etc/init.d/tftpd-hpa restart

mkimage

apt install u-boot-tools -y

Setup minicom

apt install minicom -y

Setup network bridge

brctl addbr br0
ip addr flush dev eth1
brctl addif br0 eth1
tunctl -t tap0 -u `whoami`
brctl addif br0 tap0
ifconfig eth1 up
ifconfig tap0 up
ifconfig br0 up
ifconfig br0 192.168.0.1
systemctl restart isc-dhcp-server
/etc/init.d/tftpd-hpa restart

Run

To run SentinelBoot we need to specify a known MAC address to QEMU such that the DHCP is able to recognise it and give it a fixed ip address. After which we need to request the binaries from the server before jumping to the SentinelBoot. It is important to note here U-boot handles the initial work of handling tftp this is a deliberate decision to reduce the scope of the project and prevent too much time being spent on driver development.

Run QEMU

qemu-system-riscv64 -M virt \
	-cpu rv64,v=true,vlen=1024,rvv_ma_all_1s=true,\
    rvv_ta_all_1s=true,zvbb=true,zvbc=true,zvknha=true \
	-smp 1 -m 512 -nographic \
	-display none -serial pipe:/tmp/guest -s \
	-netdev tap,id=mynet0,ifname=tap0,script=no,downscript=no \
	-device e1000,netdev=mynet0,mac=52:55:00:d1:55:01 \
	-kernel ./tftp/u-boot.bin

U-Boot step

=> setenv serverip 10.8.8.1; setenv ipaddr 10.8.8.2
=> setenv netmask 255.255.255.0
=> setenv devicetree_image qemu.dtb
=> tftp 0x80100000 ${serverip}:sentinel_boot
...
=> tftp 0x801fff00 ${serverip}:Image_signed
...
=> tftp 0x84a00000 ${serverip}:qemu.dtb
...
=> tftp 0x85000000 ${serverip}:rootfs.cpio
...
=> go 0x80100000
...

After go 0x80100000 execution is handed to SentinelBoot and will continue as expected.

Documentation

As this is a Rust project we can make use of the built in documentation handling as such the docs can be built by make doc.

Acknowledgements

• Dr Pierre Olivier - Supervisor
• Codethink - Industrial sponsor

Authors

• @lawrencehunter - sole

Contributing & Feedback

Contributions and feedback are always welcome; however, after the deadline this will not be actively worked on so response times may be slow.