Secure Communication for Embedded Devices: Best Practices for Bootloader and Application

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Communication between the microcontroller's (MCU's) bootloader (BL) and server (SRV) that run at some online virtual machine can be secured. There is only one secret that needs to be properly secure and that is Preshared Key on both sides.

Here I'll explain how we implemented secure communication between IMBootloader and our servers.

I'll start with Preshared Key. It is a key that is stored at the SRV and the BL. It is only a preshared piece of information that will make sure both BL and SRV can communicate securely with each other. The Preshared Key is the same on both sides.

On the SRV side, there are many different methods to secure the key, and only the person who has access to the server can get to it. The more problematic part is BL which will arrive to users at Hardware device. This is when Preshared Key is exposed. This is where FLASH read protections get in handy. For STM32 MCUs there is LEVEL2 protection that will make sure everything that is stored at FLASH can not be accessed with a debugger.

After Preshared Key is secured we need to make sure that the communication channel between BL and the SRV is protected. Since anyone can intercept the data, we would like to avoid sending firmware that is encrypted with the same key. This is why we calculate the key for encryption each time we initiate communication with the server and we will call it Shared Key. The Shared key is calculated both on BL and SRV sides but never sent over the communication. There are strong cryptographic methods that we are using to make sure that Man In The Middle (MITM attack) can't intercept communication or use our data later.


secure bootloader, embedded security, public, private, shared, preshared, key, stm32, key exchange
Figure 1 - Secure bootloader sequence diagram


At figure 1 is shown sequence diagram that describe all steps.

The first step is key exchange. Both BL and SRV are generating random Public and Private Keys. Then they exchange Public Keys. To be sure keys are relay generated buy trusted side, keys are sent together with the signature. Once each side receives Public Keys it can verify if the sender used the same Preshared Key. If everything has been verified both sides will proceed with creating Shared Key. Shared Key is calculated on both sides, and since the result is the same it can be used for data encryption and decryption.

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