Security begins with secure infrastructure. To have higher confidence in the security and integrity of the infrastructure, we need to anchor our trust at the foundation in a special-purpose chip.
Today, along with partners(GCP) the open source silicon root of trust project. GCP will deliver a high-quality design and integration guidelines for use in data center servers, storage, peripherals, and more. Open sourcing the silicon design makes it more transparent, trustworthy, and ultimately, secure.
Silicon chip can help ensure that the hardware infrastructure and the software that runs on it remain in their intended, trustworthy state by verifying that the critical system components boot securely using authorized and verifiable code. Silicon chip can provide many security benefits by helping to:
- Ensure that a server or a device boots with the correct firmware and hasn’t been infected by a low-level malware.
- Provide a cryptographically unique machine identity, so an operator can verify that a server or a device is legitimate.
- Protect secrets like encryption keys in a tamper-resistant way even for people with physical access (e.g., while a server or a device is being shipped).
- Provide authoritative, tamper-evident audit records and other runtime security services.
The silicon chip technology can be used in server motherboards, network cards, client devices (e.g., laptops, phones), consumer routers, IoT devices, and more. For example, Google’s data centers boot from a known trustworthy state with verified code; it is our system root of trust. Recognizing the importance of anchoring the trust in silicon, together with our partners we want to spread the benefits of reliable silicon chips to our user and the rest of the industry. I believe that the best way to accomplish that is through open source silicon.
Security is of major importance to the Open Source Project. When dealing with security matters, and in keeping with standard industry practice, there are reasons why it makes sense to be cautious and have a non-public discussion within a small group of experts before full disclosure. For example,
- to ensure responsible disclosure of vulnerabilities,
- or to discuss the security impact of new features or proposed changes to an existing feature.
Contributing code
The Open Source Project by guiding you through our process of preparing your contribution and getting it integrated.
For straight-forward and non-invasive contributions, a high level of coordination is unlikely to be necessary. In these cases, please open a pull request.
For larger proposed changes we ask contributors to:
- Discuss the matter with the team, either through the opentitan.
- Agree on a course of action and document this in a GitHub issue.
- Implement the contribution, i.e., the solution previously agreed on, and reference the discussion when submitting the contribution.
- Have the implementation reviewed by the team, address any feedback, and finally have it integrated into the project.
Note that contributions must be accompanied by sign-off text which indicates acceptance of the project’s Contributor License Agreement.