Welcome back. Let's dive right in.
Another interesting application of cryptography concepts,
is the Trusted Platform Module or TPM.
This is a hardware device that's typically integrated into the hardware of a computer,
that's a dedicated crypto processor.
TPM offers secure generation of keys,
random number generation, remote attestation,
and data binding and sealing.
A TPM has unique secret RSA key burned into the hardware at the time of manufacture,
which allows a TPM to perform things like hardware authentication.
This can detect unauthorized hardware changes to a system.
Remote attestation is the idea of a system
authenticating its software and hardware configuration to a remote system.
This enables the remote system to determine the integrity of the remote system.
This can be done using a TPM by generating a secure hash of the system configuration,
using the unique RSA key embedded in the TPM itself.
Another use of this secret hardware backed encryption key is data binding and sealing.
It involves using the secret key to derive
a unique key that's then used for encryption of data.
Basically, this binds encrypted data to the TPM and by extension,
the system the TPM is installed in,
sends only the keys stored in hardware in the TPM will be able to decrypt the data.
Data sealing is similar to binding since data
is encrypted using the hardware backed encryption key.
But, in order for the data to be decrypted,
the TPM must be in a specified state.
TPM is a standard with
several revisions that can be implemented as a discrete hardware chip,
integrated into another chip in a system,
implemented in firmware software or virtualize then a hypervisor.
The most secure implementation is the discrete chip,
since these chip packages also incorporate
physical tamper resistance to prevent physical attacks on the chip.
Mobile devices have something similar referred to as a secure element.
Similar to a TPM,
it's a tamper resistant chip often embedded in
the microprocessor or integrated into the mainboard of a mobile device.
It supplies secure storage of
cryptographic keys and provides a secure environment for applications.
An evolution of secure elements is
the Trusted Execution Environment or TEE which takes the concept a bit further.
It provides a full-blown isolated execution environment that runs alongside the main OS.
This provides isolation of the applications
from the main OS and other applications installed there.
It also isolates secure processes from each other when running in the TEE.
TPMs have received criticism around trusting the manufacturer.
Since the secret key is burned into the hardware at the time of manufacture,
the manufacturer would have access to this key at the time.
It is possible for the manufacturer to store
the keys that could then be used to duplicate a TPM,
that could break the security the module is supposed to provide.
There's been one report of a physical attack on a TPM which allowed
a security researcher to view and access the entire contents of a TPM.
But this attack required the use of an electron microscope
and micron precision equipment for manipulating a TPM circuitry.
While the process was incredibly time intensive
and required highly specialized equipment,
it proved that such an attack is possible despite the tamper protections in place.
You can read more about it just after this video.
TPMs are most commonly used to ensure platform integrity,
preventing unauthorized changes to the system either in software or hardware,
and full disk encryption utilizing the TPM to protect the entire contents of the disk.
Full Disk Encryption or FDE,
as you might have guessed from the name,
is the practice of encrypting the entire drive in the system.
Not just sensitive files in the system.
This allows us to protect the entire contents of the disk from data theft or tampering.
Now, there are a bunch of options for implementing FDE.
Like the commercial product PGP,
Bitlocker from Microsoft, which integrates very well with TPMs,
Filevault 2 from Apple,
and the open source software dm-crypt,
which provides encryption for Linux systems.
An FDE configuration will have one partition
or logical partition that holds the data to be encrypted.
Typically, the root volume,
where the OS is installed.
But, in order for the volume to be booted,
it must first be unlocked at boot time.
Because the volume is encrypted,
the BIOS can't access data on this volume for boot purposes.
This is why FDE configurations will have
a small unencrypted boot partition that contains elements like the kernel,
bootloader and a netRD.
At boot time, these elements are loaded which then prompts the user to
enter a passphrase to unlock the disk and continue the boot process.
FDE can also incorporate the TPM,
utilizing the TPM encryption keys to protect the disk.
And, it has platform integrity to prevent
unlocking of the disk if the system configuration is changed.
This protects against attacks like hardware tampering,
and disk theft or cloning.
Before we wrap up this module on encryption,
I wanted to touch base on the concept of random.
Earlier, when we covered the various encryption systems,
one commonality kept coming up that these systems rely on.
Did you notice what it was? That's okay if you didn't.
It's the selection of random numbers.
This is a very important concept in encryption
because if your number selection process isn't truly random,
then there can be some kind of pattern that an adversary can discover
through close observation and analysis of encrypted messages over time.
Something that isn't truly random is referred to as pseudo-random.
It's for this reason that operating systems
maintain what's referred to as an entropy pool.
This is essentially a source of random data to help seed random number generators.
There's also dedicated random number generators and pseudo-random number generators,
that can be incorporated into a security appliance or server to
ensure that truly random numbers are chosen when generating cryptographic keys.
I hope you found these topics in cryptography interesting and informative.
I know I did when I first learned about them.
In the next module, we'll cover the three As of security,
authentication, authorization and accounting.
These three As are awesome and I'll tell you why in the next module.
But before we get there,
one final quiz on the cryptographic concept we've covered so far.
