Embedded Technologies Expo & Conference 2020

Bootloaders have become a kind of necessary evil in embedded systems, something that is a requirement but is often treated as an afterthought. Yet  bootloaders play an essential role, not the least of which is to allow designers to add features to their product or fix bugs after it has been launched into the market. But as IoT devices proliferate, careful consideration to secure bootloader design and its role in preventing unauthorized users from gaining access to your system is even more critical.

In this two-part workshop, attendees are given a rundown on the information, approaches, and tools they need to design secure bootloaders--from MCUs to application processors--that keep the bad actors out.

Workshop Schedule
9:00AM-12:30PM | Secure Bootloader Design from MCUs to Application Processors  -  Jacob Beningo, Beningo Embedded Group
Bootloaders are a critical component in nearly every embedded system but are treated as an afterthought by many development teams. Bootloaders play an essential role in the development cycle by allowing designers to add features or fix bugs after their product has been launched into the market. As IoT devices proliferate, careful consideration must be taken in order to securely design bootloaders and ensure that only authorized firmware is able to gain access to the system. This workshop explores how to design and deploy secure bootloaders using the ST Microelectronics Secure Boot Secure Firmware Update (SBSFU) framework as an example.

12:30PM-1:30PM | Lunch

1:30PM-5:00PM | Secure Bootloader Design Workshop: Application Processors - Michael Anderson, Huntington Ingalls Industries
Getting your processor started from the initial power-on jump has never been easy. Now, when we add multi-core and security to the mix, things get even tougher. This workshop starts with the requirements of getting a higher-end processor started with the goal of running an operating system like Linux. It discusses the needed information, the approaches and the tools needed to debug the early bring-up process. Next, it walks through the transition from the early bootloader running in flash to dealing with setting up stacks and getting something running in RAM, including the use of device trees in the bootloader phase. Then, it looks at the requirements of loading the final operating system and the transition from the physical address space to the virtual memory world and the security requirements to ensure an uncompromised platform. This workshop uses U-Boot as a model since it is both open source and supports over ten different CPU architectures. However, it discusses other approaches like the PC UEFI/BIOS and others.