Master & Semester Projects

Spring Semester 2023 – 2024

Semester Project or Master Thesis for Master Students
 
Title: Platform Root of Trust with OpenTitan

Background:
Root of Trust: When a system is reset, the root of trust process (RoT) verifies the integrity of the bootloaders/firmware (secure boot) including the TCB. This is also referred to as RTM – Root of Trust for Measurement. A trusted platform module (TPM) provides the required functionality to achieve this, for e.g. cryptographic primitives, key management and storage, secure hashing, measurement and attestation services.

OpenTitan [1]: OpenTitan is an open source silicon Root of Trust (RoT) project. Its aim is to have a transparent and trustworthy silicon RoT implementation which can be tested by anyone (and thus made more robust) since it’s open source.
One of the use-cases of OpenTitan is the platform integrity module (a root of trust module). You can read more about this use-case in the platform integrity module documentation [2].

Project Goals:
  • Demonstrate a proof of concept implementation of trusted boot with OpenTitan
  • QEMU has added support for the OpenTitan machine which runs an Ibex RISC-V core and boots up Tock OS [3].
  • Establish the trust model that OpenTitan follows for performing the platform root of trust.
  • Identify the extent of support QEMU has for OpenTitan (including the lowRISC fork of QEMU).
  • Design and implement a device model for the OpenTitan machine to be connected as a device with another RISC-V core emulated with QEMU.
Keywords: Remote Attestation, QEMU, RoT (Root of Trust), Trusted Boot, TPM (trusted platform module), Confidential computing, TEE, RISC-V.If you are interested in working on this project, please reach out to us by email.

PhD Student: Neelu Kalani ([email protected])
Prof. Bugnion ([email protected])

References
[1] OpenTitan Documentation
[2] OpenTitan Platform Integrity Module Documentation
[3] OpenTitan RISC-V Board Running Tock OS QEMU Setup