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"exec" writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

OpenTitan – an open-source blueprint for a Root of Trust (RoT) system-on-chip based on RISC-V and managed by a team in Cambridge, UK – was teased by Google along with several partners today.

Hardware RoT is a means of verifying the firmware and system software in a computing device has not been tampered with, enabling features such as secure boot. Hardware RoT can also verify the integrity and authenticity of software updates, and prevent a system from being rolled back to an earlier version with known vulnerabilities. It is the lowest-level security piece in a trustworthy system.

But can you trust the RoT itself? The goal of OpenTitan is to provide an open-source design for RoT silicon so that it is (as far as possible) open for inspection.

The OpenTitan SoC will use the RISC-V open-source CPU instruction set architecture, and will be managed by lowRISC, a nonprofit in Cambridge, which has "an open-source hardware roadmap in collaboration with Google and other industry partners," we're told.

Today's announcement comes from Google, Western Digital, the ETH Zurich university, chip maker Nuvoton Technology, and friends.

The Apache 2.0-licensed OpenTitan SoC will include the lowRISC Ibex microprocessor design, cryptographic coprocessors, a hardware random-number generator, volatile and non-volatile storage, IO peripherals, and additional defensive mechanisms. It can be used in any kind of device, from servers and smartphones to Internet-of-Things gadgets.

-- submitted from IRC

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