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Re:USB armory: an open-source hardware design, flash-drive s... by wahern on Tuesday February 11, 2020 @01:09PM (#22300849)
The ATECC608A is a very nice feature. I have an older version of the USB Armory--i.MX53 and USB-A. The cryptographic engine (SCCv2), and in particular the AES module with unique, secret eFUSE'd key (for creating a proper HSM) was poorly documented. NXP only made security component documentation available under NDA, and to achieve that you needed to work with a reseller, which after repeated attempts over many weeks I never managed to accomplish. Plus, even if I got the documentation, the keyed AES module only worked properly if you had secure boot working, otherwise it used a fixed test key rather than an alternative unique key. This was such a steep hill to climb that none of the example or open source applications ever made proper use of the AES module, AFAIK.

I ended up simply buying a Pi 3, a Mikroe Click shield, and Mikroe ATECC608A board (for the shield), though by that time I had already run out of steam so I never had a chance to bring it up.

So, the ATECC608A is very nice and I'd like to see it more widely included in hardware.[1] And the armory is much smaller than my literal Pi 3 hardware stack. Bonus points if documentation for i.MX6ULZ and related bits are publicly available, but I'm not keen on risking another goose chase so I probably wouldn't even factor that in one way or another.

[1] I believe an ATECC chip is what AWS originally used for end-to-end hardware attestation of EC2 servers. And maybe still do. Though, this is speculation on my part based on some AWS developer blog posts discussing the chip.

Re:USB armory: an open-source hardware design, flash-drive s... by hlandau on Tuesday February 11, 2020 @01:49PM (#22301327)
The ATECC608A itself has an NDA'd datasheet, though.
Re:USB armory: an open-source hardware design, flash-drive s... by lcarsip on Wednesday February 12, 2020 @03:24AM (#22306963)
Yes, however it is pretty much identical to the non-NDA'ed ATECC508.

Also the ATECC608A library from Microchip is open source and you can gather all necessary info from there.

Then we also have the NXP AT71CH with all info available publicly.

Re:USB armory: an open-source hardware design, flash-drive s... by ktm5j on Tuesday February 11, 2020 @02:54PM (#22302099)
I think that's his point, and that's why he's glad to see it in the newer version.
Re:USB armory: an open-source hardware design, flash-drive s... by wahern on Tuesday February 11, 2020 @03:35PM (#22302538)
I didn't know the ATECC608A had an NDA'd datasheet. But as far as I remember all documentation needed to utilize it from software (e.g. I2C protocol) was available, in PDF or in code (https://github.com/MicrochipTech/cryptoauthlib/).