© Jiewen Yao and Vincent Zimmer 2020
J. Yao, V. ZimmerBuilding Secure Firmwarehttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-6106-4_17

17. Trusted Execution Environment

Jiewen Yao1  and Vincent Zimmer2
(1)
Shanghai, China
(2)
Issaquah, WA, USA
 

A trusted execution environment (TEE) means a secure area which can guarantee the confidentiality and integrity of the code and data inside of this area. Usually a TEE is an isolated execution environment. It may be implemented as a special secure mode of the main processor, or a TEE could be maintained by a secure coprocessor.

CPU-Based TEE

First, let’s take a look at the CPU-based TEE.

X86 SMM

Dating back to 1990, system management mode (SMM) was introduced in the Intel 386SL processor. Just like its name, SMM is designed for ...

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