How to correctly sign EFI Firmware Volume?

How to correctly sign EFI Firmware Volume?

[Petr Vandrovec]

Hi,
   I've sent this ot fw_os_forum, and was redirected here.  Sorry if you 
are receiving this twice.


I'm looking at options how to sign our EFI firmware through some 
industry-standard embedded signature option, and signing whole firmware 
volume as described in Platform Initialization spec would definitely fit 
the bill.

Unfortunately problem is that I cannot make sense of what should be 
actually signed.  Chapter 3.2.1.1 of PI_Spec_1_6.pdf says:

<quote>
3.2.1.1 EFI Signed Firmware Volumes

There may be one or more headers with a FormatType of value 
EFI_FIRMWARE_CONTENTS_SIGNED_GUID.

A signed firmware volume is a cryptographic signature across the entire 
volume. To process the contents and verify the integrity of the volume, 
the EFI_FIRMWARE_VOLUME_EXT_ENTRY_GUID_TYPE Data[] shall contain an 
instance of WIN_CERTIFICATE_UEFI_GUID where the CertType = 
EFI_CERT_TYPE_PKCS7_GUID or EFI_CERT_TYPE_RSA2048_SHA256_GUID.
</quote>

Part about WIN_CERTIFICATE_UEFI_GUID is easy.  But what should be signed?

Text says 'A signed firmware volume is a cryptographic signature across 
the entire volume.' - beside that 'firmware volume' is not a signature, 
what is 'the entire volume' ?  Clearly Data[] entry holding signature 
cannot be part of the signature, as otherwise adding signature would 
invalidate that very same signature, so it cannot be signature of entire 
volume from first 16 reserved bytes in the header to the last byte of 
the image, but something else.

Can someone provide clarification what should be signed?  It seems to me 
like that intention is to only sign data portion of the volume, from the 
end of extended header to the end of volume.  But that means that anyone 
can modify anything in the header or extended header without breaking 
signature.

Are there any examples of signed firmware volumes?  Unfortunately there 
does not seem to be any code in UDK for this feature.


On fw_os_forum I got recommendation to use EFI capsule format for signing.

Unfortunately I cannot figure out how to make out-of-band signatures 
work for firmware volumes in a secure way: firmware module has to be 
multiple of (at least) 4KB, and must cover last 16 bytes of ROM (as that 
is where execution starts).  Then I need to prepend capsule header (or 
wrapping firmware volume header) and signature in front of that.  Dual 
SHA1/256 signing with timestamps takes about 5KB, so there are 3KB of 
free unsigned space left.

If I leave those 3KB unsigned, anybody can remove them, shift signed 
image down by 3KB, and then have 3KB of unsigned code running at the 
reset vector :-(

Or I can do trial signing, figure out how long signature will probably 
be, and then extend signed area so that only capsule header and 
signature unsigned.  That could work, but then I'm not signing firmware 
volume, but firmware volume with 3KB of data prepended to it (or 
firmware volume that is not multiple of 4KB, if I let our firmware 
volume to have arbitrary size), which is not exactly industry standard.

And even if I do this, as image is dual signed, someone can remove SHA1 
signature, shift rest down, and get about 1KB for the malicious code.

So for all non-embedded signatures I'm always coming up with <do this 
standard thing> and require that signed payload ends with end of ROM, 
while I'm looking for just <do this standard thing>, without strings 
attached.


Thanks,
Petr Vandrovec

Re: How to correctly sign EFI Firmware Volume?

[Andrew Fish]

Petr,

Mike Kinney and I just had an interesting conversation that relates to your question. 

It has to do with the FV being a file system and not really the FLASH layout. In the UEFI PI Spec and edk2 lingo you produce and FD (Flash Device) that consists of a set of FVs. There is not a standard way to discover the FVs in an FD, and this is something that is missing in the PI Spec. On most platforms there are multiple FVs so there should be a defined signing scheme for the entire FD. 

> On Oct 2, 2018, at 2:12 PM, Petr Vandrovec <petr@vmware.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
>  I've sent this ot fw_os_forum, and was redirected here.  Sorry if you are receiving this twice.
> 
> 
> I'm looking at options how to sign our EFI firmware through some industry-standard embedded signature option, and signing whole firmware volume as described in Platform Initialization spec would definitely fit the bill.
> 
> Unfortunately problem is that I cannot make sense of what should be actually signed.  Chapter 3.2.1.1 of PI_Spec_1_6.pdf says:
> 
> <quote>
> 3.2.1.1 EFI Signed Firmware Volumes
> 
> There may be one or more headers with a FormatType of value EFI_FIRMWARE_CONTENTS_SIGNED_GUID.
> 
> A signed firmware volume is a cryptographic signature across the entire volume. To process the contents and verify the integrity of the volume, the EFI_FIRMWARE_VOLUME_EXT_ENTRY_GUID_TYPE Data[] shall contain an instance of WIN_CERTIFICATE_UEFI_GUID where the CertType = EFI_CERT_TYPE_PKCS7_GUID or EFI_CERT_TYPE_RSA2048_SHA256_GUID.
> </quote>
> 
> Part about WIN_CERTIFICATE_UEFI_GUID is easy.  But what should be signed?
> 
> Text says 'A signed firmware volume is a cryptographic signature across the entire volume.' - beside that 'firmware volume' is not a signature, what is 'the entire volume' ?  Clearly Data[] entry holding signature cannot be part of the signature, as otherwise adding signature would invalidate that very same signature, so it cannot be signature of entire volume from first 16 reserved bytes in the header to the last byte of the image, but something else.
> 
> Can someone provide clarification what should be signed?  It seems to me like that intention is to only sign data portion of the volume, from the end of extended header to the end of volume.  But that means that anyone can modify anything in the header or extended header without breaking signature.
> 
> Are there any examples of signed firmware volumes?  Unfortunately there does not seem to be any code in UDK for this feature.
> 
> 
> On fw_os_forum I got recommendation to use EFI capsule format for signing.
> 
> Unfortunately I cannot figure out how to make out-of-band signatures work for firmware volumes in a secure way: firmware module has to be multiple of (at least) 4KB, and must cover last 16 bytes of ROM (as that is where execution starts).  Then I need to prepend capsule header (or wrapping firmware volume header) and signature in front of that.  Dual SHA1/256 signing with timestamps takes about 5KB, so there are 3KB of free unsigned space left.
> 
> If I leave those 3KB unsigned, anybody can remove them, shift signed image down by 3KB, and then have 3KB of unsigned code running at the reset vector :-(

If some one can write your FLASH device they can just skip checking the result of your HASH, no need to shift things about. 

A really secure boot usually requires a mask ROM that checks the NOR FLASH. Something akin to Intel Boot Guard. 

Thanks,

Andrew Fish

> 
> Or I can do trial signing, figure out how long signature will probably be, and then extend signed area so that only capsule header and signature unsigned.  That could work, but then I'm not signing firmware volume, but firmware volume with 3KB of data prepended to it (or firmware volume that is not multiple of 4KB, if I let our firmware volume to have arbitrary size), which is not exactly industry standard.
> 
> And even if I do this, as image is dual signed, someone can remove SHA1 signature, shift rest down, and get about 1KB for the malicious code.
> 
> So for all non-embedded signatures I'm always coming up with <do this standard thing> and require that signed payload ends with end of ROM, while I'm looking for just <do this standard thing>, without strings attached.
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> Petr Vandrovec
> 
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