Open Portable Trusted Execution Environment framework for RISC-V
Marouene Boubakri, Fausto Chiatante, Belhassen Zouari · 2021
A Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) is a relatively new technology that provides hardware-enforced isolation within a processor allowing an application to run in a separate execution area called an enclave. It aims to increase the protection level and defenses against the exploitation of software flaws. This way, if the system gets compromised, the attacker cannot access the user's important assets. A recent trend in TEE development is the transition from vendor-controlled, single-purpose TEEs to open TEEs that host Trusted Applications (TAs) from multiple sources with various use-cases in mind. This transition has created a TA ecosystem that provides more robust and customized security to applications and rich operating systems such as Linux and Android. TEEs are widely deployed, especially on consumer devices whose processors are based on the ARM architecture. As an increasing number of vendors now plans to adopt the RISC-V architecture in their products, defining an approach to reuse the existing TAs is needed. This paper aims to port the OP-TEE framework to RISC-V to incorporate various software components, including middle-ware, security stacks, tools, and community support, with the final goal of moving RISC-V forward.