Secure Boot Quickstart

Overview

Secure boot is a mechanism for verifying the integrity of the kernel image and other files required during boot by storing them in a signed ramdisk image. These files include the GPU firmware (start.elf etc), kernel, initrd, Device Tree and overlays. Secure boot does not depend on a particular OS, nor does it provide services to the OS after startup. However, since secure boot will only load trusted kernel and initrd images, the kernel/initrd can safely verify or mount an an encrypted file system e.g. by using a TPM.

N.B. The memory for the secure ramdisk is reclaimed as soon as the CPU is started.

Example OS

This example includes a simple buildroot image for Compute Module 4 in order to demonstrate secure boot on a simple but functional OS.

The example does NOT modify the OTP or make other permanent changes to the system; the code signing can be disabled by reflashing the default bootloader EEPROM.

This tutorial does not cover how to create the boot.img file or permanently require secure boot in OTP. Please see the top level README and secure-boot-recovery/README guides for more information.

Requirements for running this example

• A Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4
• Micro USB cable for rpiboot connection
• USB serial cable (for debug logs)
• Linux or Cygwin (Windows 10)
• OpenSSL
• Python3
• Python cryptodomex

python3 -m pip install pycryptodomex
# or
pip install pycryptodomex

Clean configuration

Before starting it's advisable to create a fresh clone of the usbboot repo to ensure that there are no stale configuration files.

git clone https://github.com/raspberrypi/usbboot secure-boot
cd secure-boot
make

See the top-level README for build instructions.

Hardware setup for rpiboot mode

Prepare the Compute Module for rpiboot mode:

• Set the nRPIBOOT jumper which is labelled `Fit jumper to disable eMMC Boot' on the Compute Module 4 IO board.
• Connect the micro USB cable to the USB slave port on the CM4 IO board.
• Power cycle the CM4 IO board.
• Connect the USB serial adapter to GPIO 14/15 on the 40-pin header.

Reset the Compute Module EEPROM

Enable rpiboot mode and flash the latest EEPROM image:

./rpiboot -d recovery

Boot the example image

Enable rpiboot mode and load the OS via rpiboot without enabling code-signing:

./rpiboot -d secure-boot-example

The OS should load and show activity on the boot UART and HDMI console.

Generate a signing key

Secure boot requires a 2048 bit RSA private key. You can either use a pre-existing key or generate an specific key for this example. The KEY_FILE environment variable used in the following instructions must contain the absolute path to the RSA private key in PEM format.

openssl genrsa 2048 > private.pem
export KEY_FILE=$(pwd)/private.pem

In a production environment it's essential that this key file is stored privately and securely.

Update the EEPROM to require signed OS images

Enable rpiboot mode and flash the bootloader EEPROM with updated setting enables code signing.

The boot.conf file sets the SIGNED_BOOT property 1 which instructs the bootloader to only load files (firmware, kernel, overlays etc) from boot.img instead of the normal boot partition and verify the boot.img signature boot.sig using the public key in the EEPROM.

The update-pieeprom.sh generates the signed pieeprom.bin image.

cd secure-boot-recovery
# Generate the signed EEPROM image.
../tools/update-pieeprom.sh -k "${KEY_FILE}"
cd ..
./rpiboot -d secure-boot-recovery

At this stage OTP has not been modified and the signed image requirement can be reverted by flashing a default, unsigned image. However, once the OTP secure-boot flags are set then SIGNED_BOOT is permenantely enabled and cannot be overriden via the EEPROM config.

Update the signature for the example OS image

cd secure-boot-example
../tools/rpi-eeprom-digest -i boot.img -o boot.sig -k "${KEY_FILE}"
cd ..

Launch the signed OS image

Enable rpiboot mode and run the example OS as before. However, if the boot.sig signature does not match boot.img, the bootloader will refuse to load the OS.

./rpiboot -d secure-boot-example

This example OS image is minimal Linux ramdisk image. Login as root with the empty password.

Mount the CM4 SD/EMMC after enabling secure-boot

Now that SIGNED_BOOT is enabled the bootloader will only load images signed with private key generated earlier. To boot the Compute Module in mass storage mode a signed version of this code must be generated.

This signed image should not be made available for download because it gives access to the EMMC as a block device.

Sign the mass storage firmware image

Sign the mass storage drivers in the secure-boot-msd directory. Please see the top level README for a description of the different usbboot firmware drivers.

cd secure-boot-msd
../tools/rpi-eeprom-digest -i boot.img -o boot.sig -k "${KEY_FILE}"
cd ..

Enable MSD mode

A new mass storage device should now be visible on the host OS. On Linux check dmesg for something like '/dev/sda'.

./rpiboot -d secure-boot-msd

Loading boot.img from SD/EMMC

The bootloader can load a ramdisk boot.img from any of the bootable modes defined by the BOOT_ORDER EEPROM config setting.

For example:

• Boot the CM4 in MSD mode as explained in the previous step.
• Copy the boot.img and boot.sig files from the secure-boot-example stage to the mass storage drive: No other files are required.
• Remove the nRPIBOOT jumper.
• Power cycle the CM4 IO board.
• The system should now boot into the OS.

N.B. The example image is currently the same as the mass storage-gadget, so the EMMC/SD will appear as block devices on the host PC if the micro USB cable is still connected.