10.4. DRTM Proof of Concept

Dynamic Root of Trust for Measurement (DRTM) begins a new trust environment by measuring and executing a protected payload.

Static Root of Trust for Measurement (SRTM)/Measured Boot implementation, currently used by TF-A covers all firmwares, from the boot ROM to the normal world bootloader. As a whole, they make up the system’s TCB. These boot measurements allow attesting to what software is running on the system and enable enforcing security policies.

As the boot chain grows or firmware becomes dynamically extensible, establishing an attestable TCB becomes more challenging. DRTM provides a solution to this problem by allowing measurement chains to be started at any time. As these measurements are stored separately from the boot-time measurements, they reduce the size of the TCB, which helps reduce the attack surface and the risk of untrusted code executing, which could compromise the security of the system.

10.4.1. Components

  • DCE-Preamble: The DCE Preamble prepares the platform for DRTM by doing any needed configuration, loading the target payload image(DLME), and preparing input parameters needed by DRTM. Finally, it invokes the DL Event to start the dynamic launch.

  • D-CRTM: The D-CRTM is the trust anchor (or root of trust) for the DRTM boot sequence and is where the dynamic launch starts. The D-CRTM must be implemented as a trusted agent in the system. The D-CRTM initializes the TPM for DRTM and prepares the environment for the next stage of DRTM, the DCE. The D-CRTM measures the DCE, verifies its signature, and transfers control to it.

  • DCE: The DCE executes on an application core. The DCE verifies the system’s state, measures security-critical attributes of the system, prepares the memory region for the target payload, measures the payload, and finally transfers control to the payload.

  • DLME: The protected payload is referred to as the Dynamically Launched Measured Environment, or DLME. The DLME begins execution in a safe state, with a single thread of execution, DMA protections, and interrupts disabled. The DCE provides data to the DLME that it can use to verify the configuration of the system.

In this proof of concept, DCE and D-CRTM are implemented in BL31 and DCE-Preamble and DLME are implemented in UEFI application. A DL Event is triggered as a SMC by DCE-Preamble and handled by D-CRTM, which launches the DLME via DCE.

This manual provides instructions to build TF-A code with pre-buit EDK2 and DRTM UEFI application.

10.4.2. Building the PoC for the Arm FVP platform

  1. Use the below command to clone TF-A source code -

$ git clone https://git.trustedfirmware.org/TF-A/trusted-firmware-a.git
  1. There are prebuilt binaries required to execute the DRTM implementation in the prebuilts-drtm-bins. Download EDK2 FVP_AARCH64_EFI.fd and UEFI DRTM application test-disk.img binary from prebuilts-drtm-bins.

  2. Build the TF-A code using below command

$ make CROSS_COMPILE=aarch64-none-elf- ARM_ROTPK_LOCATION=devel_rsa
  DEBUG=1 V=1 BL33=</path/to/FVP_AARCH64_EFI.fd> DRTM_SUPPORT=1
  MBEDTLS_DIR=</path/to/mbedTLS-source> USE_ROMLIB=1 all fip

10.4.3. Running DRTM UEFI application on the Armv8-A AEM FVP

To run the DRTM test application along with DRTM implementation in BL31, you need an FVP model. Please use the version of FVP_Base_RevC-2xAEMvA model advertised in the TF-A documentation.

FVP_Base_RevC-2xAEMvA \
--data cluster0.cpu0=</path/to/romlib.bin>@0x03ff2000 \
--stat \
-C bp.flashloader0.fname=<path/to/fip.bin> \
-C bp.secureflashloader.fname=<path/to/bl1.bin> \
-C bp.ve_sysregs.exit_on_shutdown=1 \
-C bp.virtioblockdevice.image_path=<path/to/test-disk.img> \
-C cache_state_modelled=1 \
-C cluster0.check_memory_attributes=0 \
-C cluster0.cpu0.etm-present=0 \
-C cluster0.cpu1.etm-present=0 \
-C cluster0.cpu2.etm-present=0 \
-C cluster0.cpu3.etm-present=0 \
-C cluster0.stage12_tlb_size=1024 \
-C cluster1.check_memory_attributes=0 \
-C cluster1.cpu0.etm-present=0 \
-C cluster1.cpu1.etm-present=0 \
-C cluster1.cpu2.etm-present=0 \
-C cluster1.cpu3.etm-present=0 \
-C cluster1.stage12_tlb_size=1024 \
-C pctl.startup=0.0.0.0 \
-Q 1000 \
"$@"

The bottom of the output from uart1 should look something like the following to indicate that the last SMC to unprotect memory has been fired successfully.

...

INFO:    DRTM service handler: version
INFO:    ++ DRTM service handler: TPM features
INFO:    ++ DRTM service handler: Min. mem. requirement features
INFO:    ++ DRTM service handler: DMA protection features
INFO:    ++ DRTM service handler: Boot PE ID features
INFO:    ++ DRTM service handler: TCB-hashes features
INFO:    DRTM service handler: dynamic launch
WARNING: DRTM service handler: close locality is not supported
INFO:    DRTM service handler: unprotect mem

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