Theatre

How to Keep Your Secret (Key)?

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34:34

EOC 2023

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Pawel Gielmuda

Pawel Gielmuda is a seasoned software and hardware engineer with 12 years of experience in the field. He was involved in the development of an IP Encryptor from the ground up, using an FPGA chip for five years. This project has given him a comprehensive understanding of software and hardware development for cryptographic devices. In addition to this, he has also worked on software testing for the largest cruise aircraft, ensuring compliance with the DO-178 standard. Currently, Pawel is employed at Mobica, where he is responsible for testing server cryptographic accelerators. In his free time, he maintains a blog at https://pgielmuda.medium.com/.

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Security

Theatre

How to Keep Your Secret (Key)?

Pawel Gielmuda

34:34 EOC 2023

Pawel Gielmuda

34:34

During the presentation I will start by exploring low-level attacks to obtain secret keys:

Examining the Meltdown and Spectre attacks, which exploit hardware architectural features,
Understanding Side Channel Attacks on AES based on chip power consumption,
Analyzing example of poor key management and quality in WEP WiFi networks.

After that, I will explain how to secure cryptography keys by:

proper generation (entropy and random number generator)
safe exchange (Diffie-Helman and Quantum key approach)
proper distribution (centralized vs distributed -> PKI vs blockchain approach)
secure storage (in embedded devices, servers, hardware wallets)

Finally, I will provide an example of an IoT device to illustrate how the above features are demonstrated in real-world application.

1 / 3

Please log in or create an account to test your knowledge and see the answers.

What is the primary technical reason the speaker gives for why Meltdown and Spectre can leak secrets, and why are software-only fixes imperfect?

A They exploit speculative execution which leaves cache side-effects that let attackers infer memory contents; software mitigations exist but typically slow the system or remain incomplete.

B They are caused by an OS-level memory allocation bug that can be patched fully with an update; software fixes have no performance impact.

C They exploit poorly written device drivers only, so simply removing third-party drivers eliminates the risk.

D They rely on predictable network traffic patterns, and installing a firewall completely prevents the attacks.

E They are hardware defects in GPUs only, so replacing the CPU solves the problem entirely.

According to the talk, why did WEP fail as a secure wireless encryption scheme?

A Because WEP used a small (24-bit) IV combined with a constant 40-bit key, giving insufficient per-session randomness for a stream cipher and enabling practical key/message recovery.

B Because WEP used AES with an insecure block mode that made the cipher mathematically broken.

C Because WEP relied on public-key cryptography which is too slow for WiFi and therefore was abandoned.

D Because wireless signals always leak secrets and no encryption can protect over-the-air traffic.

E Because WEP required user passwords that were always stored in plaintext on the access point.

For storing and using cryptographic keys on embedded devices, what approach does the speaker recommend as the safest?

A Use hardware-based key protection (a trusted area / Trusted Execution Environment) so keys are not exposed to user applications; avoid relying on software-only storage of plaintext keys.

B Store keys encrypted in regular flash and decrypt them in user-space only when needed; this is equivalent in safety to hardware protection.

C Hardcode plaintext keys into application firmware so they are easy to access and update remotely.

D Split the key into many RAM locations in user-space without encryption to reduce risk of a single leak.

E Rely entirely on cloud servers to hold keys and never keep any key material on the device, even for runtime use.

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DS

Score: 0 | 3 years ago | no reply

I really enjoyed your presentation and found it informative. Thank you!

Nathan3

Score: 0 | 3 years ago | no reply

Thanks Pawel for the presentation. In terms of actual hardware solution, what exactly is important to look fore when storage keys in an embedded system (microcontroller-based) ? Between the dual core 'pseudo hardware isolation' of things like the STM32WL, the ARM definition for Trustzone-M and the external secure element components, it's hard to figure out what is what and in which case each solution makes more sense.

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