The group High Performance Multimedia from the Institute of Embedded Systems associated with ZHAW School of Engineering proudly presents a secure boot implementation for the SoC module Mercury XU5 from Enclustra based on the Zynq Ultrascale+ MPSoC from Xilinx. This reference design was created during a bachelor thesis and afterwards released on github. The repository was forked and further updated by Enclustra, to keep the reference design up to date.
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This reference design for the Mercury PE1 board with the SoC Module Mercury XU5 was created during a bachelor thesis. It provides a reference implementation and instructions on how to create a secure and boot able image for your device, as well as other security features provided with the Xilinx Ultrascale+ MPSoC.
The complete documentation of the bachelor thesis can be found in the here.
| Folder/File name | Description |
|---|---|
| crypto-api | Contains the description and according examples to work with the Linux Crypto API. |
| petalinux-prj | Contains a PetaLinux project and the description to generate an encrypted and authenticated boot image. |
| program-efuse-bbram | Contains the description how to program the eFuse and BBRAM. |
| tamper-monitoring | Contains the description how to implement the tamper monitoring unit. Additionally, it contains also files used for testing. |
| trustzone | Contains the description for TrustZone implementation. How to implement OP-TEE on the zcu102 Evaluation Kit from Xilinx is also described. |
| update-process | Contains a description how an update procedure may look like. |
| BA20_rosn_02_Secure_Boot_final.pdf | Final bachelor thesis documentation. |
The petalinux-prj directory contains a PetaLinux project, which can be built with just a few steps. Start here if you want to build your own secure image. Later you can expand the project with various other features.
The tamper-monitoring directory describes how to implement the tamper monitoring unit on the Zynq Ultrascale+. It describes three different ways to configure the tamper and system monitoring unit. Additionally, some files are provided to test the implementation.
The eFuse and BBRAM are the secure storage in the Zynq Ultrascale+. The BBRAM is a battery backed storage, which is non-permanent. It can contain the AES device key. The eFuse is a permanent register, where important security settings are stored. Beside, it can also contain the AES device key as well as the RSA key hash for verification. The program-efuse-bbram directory contains a small description and links to tutorials from Xilinx.
Updating firmware and software is crucial to maintain security during the life-cycle of a device. In the update-process directory, some advises are given on how to implement an update procedure.
The Zynq Ultrascale+ has cryptography hardware for different algorithms with key handling integrated in the hardware. The directory crypto-api describes how the hardware of the Zynq Ultrascale+ can be used in Linux with the Crypto API.
The Zynq Ultrascale+ supports ARM TrustZone. The directory trustzone describes the concept and shows the implementation of OP-TEE a secure OS.
This section describes the tools and the environment used for the implementation. All features were tested on a Mercury XU5 (ME-XU5-5EV-2I-D12E) module mounted on a Mercury PE1 board (ME-PE1-300-W). The examples were tested with Enclustras Reference Design and Petalinux Images for Xilinx tool version 2020.1. But the examples are likely to work with future Reference Design and Petalinux releases as well. Most applications were manually compiled, although they can be directly integrated into the PetaLinux process. The gnu-aarch64-none-linux-gcc compiler (9.2-2019.12) was used to manually compile the applications. The operating system of the host computer was based on Ubuntu 18.04.