Building Secure Firmware: Armoring the Foundation of the Platform

© Jiewen Yao and Vincent Zimmer 2020

J. Yao, V. ZimmerBuilding Secure Firmwarehttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-6106-4_19

19. Cryptography

Jiewen Yao¹  and Vincent Zimmer²

(1)

Shanghai, China

(2)

Issaquah, WA, USA

 

When we implement the firmware and add security features, such as firmware image verification and firmware attestation, we need to use cryptography to protect our system. Classic cryptography can be traced back to the Roman empire when people used the Caesar cipher. It ended at World War II when the Germans used the Enigma machine to encrypt the message, and the Enigma was cracked finally by Bombe – an electro-mechanical device used by the British cryptologists. The two types of classic ciphers are substitution and transposition. However, ...