USB Armory: Open Source Flash-Drive Sized USB Stick Computer

Patrick · November 13, 2017, 12:12pm

Any opinions?

HulaHoop · November 14, 2017, 1:35am

Great open hardware project despite being a little underpowered. I thought of applications for Whonix baremetal but I don’t know where it would lead.

N.B. TrustZone is worthless as a security mechanism but it doesn’t hurt that they actually let the user choose what/if they want to use it.

Patrick · November 14, 2017, 1:15pm

It has secure boot where you can fuse your own keys. Pretty cool.

Secure boot · usbarmory/usbarmory Wiki · GitHub

Unfortunately that is broken.

github.com

usbarmory/usbarmory/blob/master/software/secure_boot/Security_Advisory-Ref_QBVR2017-0001.txt

Security advisory: High Assurance Boot (HABv4) bypass
=====================================================

The NXP i.MX53 System-on-Chip, main processor used in the USB armory Mk I board
[1] design, suffers from vulnerabilities that allow bypass of the optional High
Assurance Boot function (HABv4).

The HABv4 [2] enables on-chip internal boot ROM authentication of the initial
bootloader with a digital signature, establishing the first trust anchor for
further code authentication.

This functionality is commonly known as Secure Boot [3] and it can be activated
by users who require authentication of the bootloader (e.g. U-Boot) to further
maintain, and verify, trust of executed code.

Quarkslab reported [4] to NXP, and subsequently to Inverse Path, two different
techniques for bypassing HABv4 by means of exploiting validation errors in the
SoC internal boot ROM [5], which are exposed before bootloader authentication
takes place.

This file has been truncated. show original

I wonder if full disk encryption is available, but I would speculate so.

There is even an USB host adapter.

Host adapter · usbarmory/usbarmory Wiki · GitHub

So you can even connect keyboard / mice / other USB devices.