cryptography

4 posts tagged cryptography, newest first.

Tagged cryptography

4 posts
17 Sep 2026
9 min

What secure boot actually is on an STM32MP1: the header, field by field

Signing is not encrypting — the thing burned into silicon is public and you could print it on a billboard. The chicken-and-egg the 32 bytes solve, the STM32 header field by field, four locks wearing one name, and the two things I got wrong and had to correct.

cryptographyembeddedsecure-bootstm32mp1u-boot
16 Sep 2026
6 min

Four different things people call “security” on an embedded device

Authenticity, integrity, confidentiality and identity are four separate problems with four separate answers. Three private keys that must never be mixed up, why the firmware trust anchor does not identify a device, and the one I had backwards.

cryptographyembeddedsecure-bootsecuritystm32mp1
16 Mar 2026
5 min

Generating HAB keys with NXP's Code Signing Tool (CST 4.0.1)

Getting CST, generating the thirteen-key HAB PKI tree with hab4_pki_tree.sh, and building the SRK table and its fuse hash with srktool. Including the thing that script does silently if you do not read it first: it invents a passphrase for you, and the passphrase is 'test'.

cryptographycstembeddedhabimx8secure-boot
09 Mar 2026
5 min

The HABv4 key hierarchy: SRK, CSF, IMG and the fuses

Why i.MX8M secure boot needs thirteen key pairs rather than one, what 'open' and 'closed' actually mean, and which single 256-bit value ends up permanently burned into the chip. The concepts, before any tool touches anything.

cryptographyembeddedhabimx8secure-boot