Betrusted: A Security Enclave for Humans
betrusted.io
betrusted.io
That alone has me very interested.
As most ycnews readers already know Andrew has made it his mission to direct his considerable talents on projects that push up against oppression - instead of focusing his energy on helping unicorns. I'm a huge fan/supporter of his work (e.g. Novena, NeTV, Safecast) and will likely pick one of these up when it goes GA.
The Betrusted team is funded in part by the NLnet Foundation via Privacy & Trust Enhancing Technologies grants.
(I mean that additional Cortex-M0/3? core which run in a super previleged mode and often implements the EFI, DRM bs, and sometimes a TPM module)
So I guess we just have to live with it ;)
Edit: through yes secure enclave, secure element and TPM are not the same but they have in common that the represent mistrust in the rest of the hardware.
So I've always wondered why we haven't seen more projects like this.
In my opinion, they should drop the hardware keyboard in favor of a d-pad or a few Yes/No type buttons and an onscreen keyboard. If the hardware is to be trusted this shouldn't matter to the trust calculus. And the market has proved the blackberry segment is niche.
Whatever you do with data security, messaging and so on, you're using a device that knows where you are at all times. With perhaps centimeter accuracy, using GPS and triangulation from WiFi access points. And all that prevents that from being shared is some software settings. On a device where you're not even root.
Would any of the Linux-capable phones run VirtualBox, with a few VMs?
Is anyone working on a phone that might run Qubes?
There is more money in surveillance, as we’ve seen, than privacy.
But this is also because a mobile is a black box for them, and it would give them a big headache to try and understand that site about that phone. In the end, for them, they still have to trust the developers, so they stick with the ones they know by the corporations.
I strongly recommend this talk by Andrew "Bunnie" Huang it gives a lot of background on his thinking about Open Hardware/Software:
The FPGA is the weak link as he says. Everything else is cool (like the physical keyboard and LCD you can inspect with a light) but you can't validate the FPGA. I'd assume it'd be harder for a threat actor to compromise (make a compromised FPGA would take more resources than compromising the keyboard, etc)
The first team that can ship a universal, secure hardware wallet that 'just works' for $50-$150 could sell 5 million units in a year. In 7 years there could be billions of them, selling for $10+ a unit; a consumable like a traditional wallet.
I would keep one on my person at nearly all times, and have it replicate state to another at home, and a third in some vault service (like a connected safety deposit box). They devices would establish a physical pairing by creating an irreversible key-pair on the hardware itself. The replication could be a sequential log (like mysql binlog or git), and the integrity of that log could be additionally verified by bringing the devices within close proximity. All that is to say, there needs to be a secure, peer-based way to mitigate inevitable loss, damage or theft of the physical device- without centralizing the data or losing state. It would do well to be dummy-proof and make fun sounds when performing the above pairing and verifying operations. Megacorps shouldn't get to be in charge of syncing everything for us.
Let's take back the autonomy that has been stolen from us during these awkward teenage years of a digitally-driven society, and this time let's keep it in our own hands.
a) input via hardware keyboard, if the betrusted is a part of the phone case, should be simple to eavesdrop on based on microphone and/or accelerometer readings in the phone: different keys on the keyboard will likely be different enough. b) input via voice can be eavesdropped on by the phone' microphone.
Do I misunderstand the guarantees betrusted intends to provide or something else?
He starts talking about betrusted at 30:00
Please add: - Hardware switches for RF modules as well as microphones - Separate RAM for baseband SOC