In this article by Josh Datko, author of BeagleBone for Secret Agents, you will learn how to use the BeagleBone Black to safeguard e-mail encryption keys.

(For more resources related to this topic, see here.)

After our investigation into BBB hardware security, we'll now use that technology to protect your personal encryption keys for the popular GPG software. GPG is a free implementation of the OpenPGP standard. This standard was developed based on the work of Philip Zimmerman and his Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) software. PGP has a complex socio-political backstory, which we'll briefly cover before getting into the project. For the project, we'll treat the BBB as a separate cryptographic co-processor and use the CryptoCape, with a keypad code entry device, to protect our GPG keys when they are not in use.

Specifically, we will do the following:

Tell you a little about the history and importance of the PGP software
Perform basic threat modeling to analyze your project
Create a strong PGP key using the free GPG software
Teach you to use the TPM to protect encryption keys

History of PGP

The software used in this article would have once been considered a munition by the U.S. Government. Exporting it without a license from the government, would have violated the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). As late as the early 1990s, cryptography was heavily controlled and restricted. While the early 90s are filled with numerous accounts by crypto-activists, all of which are well documented in Steven Levy's Crypto, there is one man in particular who was the driving force behind the software in this project: Philip Zimmerman.

Philip Zimmerman had a small pet project around the year 1990, which he called Pretty Good Privacy. Motivated by a strong childhood passion for codes and ciphers, combined with a sense of political activism against a government capable of strong electronic surveillance, he set out to create a strong encryption program for the people (Levy 2001).

One incident in particular helped to motivate Zimmerman to finish PGP and publish his work. This was the language that the then U.S. Senator Joseph Biden added to Senate Bill #266, which would mandate that:

"Providers of electronic communication services and manufacturers of electronic communications service equipment shall ensure that communication systems permit the government to obtain the plaintext contents of voice, data, and other communications when appropriately authorized by law."

In 1991, in a rush to release PGP 1.0 before it was illegal, Zimmerman released his software as a freeware to the Internet. Subsequently, after PGP spread, the U.S. Government opened a criminal investigation on Zimmerman for the violation of the U.S. export laws. Zimmerman, in what is best described as a legal hack, published the entire source code of PGP, including instructions on how to scan it back into digital form, as a book. As Zimmerman describes:

"It would be politically difficult for the Government to prohibit the export of a book that anyone may find in a public library or a bookstore."

(Zimmerman, 1995)

A book published in the public domain would no longer fall under ITAR export controls. The genie was out of the bottle; the government dropped its case against Zimmerman in 1996.

Reflecting on the Crypto Wars

Zimmerman's battle is considered a resilient victory. Many other outspoken supporters of strong cryptography, known as cypherpunks, also won battles popularizing and spreading encryption technology. But if the Crypto Wars were won in the early nineties, why hasn't cryptography become ubiquitous? Well, to a degree, it has. When you make purchases online, it should be protected by strong cryptography. Almost nobody would insist that their bank or online store not use cryptography and most probably feel more secure that they do. But what about personal privacy protecting software? For these tools, habits must change as the normal e-mail, chat, and web browsing tools are insecure by default. This change causes tension and resistance towards adoption.

Also, security tools are notoriously hard to use. In the seminal paper on security usability, researchers conclude that the then PGP version 5.0, complete with a Graphical User Interface (GUI), was not able to prevent users, who were inexperienced with cryptography but all of whom had at least some college education, from making catastrophic security errors (Whitten 1999). Glenn Greenwald delayed his initial contact with Edward Snowden for roughly two months because he thought GPG was too complicated to use (Greenwald, 2014). Snowden absolutely refused to share anything with Greenwald until he installed GPG.

GPG and PGP enable an individual to protect their own communications. Implicitly, you must also trust the receiving party not to forward your plaintext communication. GPG expects you to protect your private key and does not rely on a third party. While this adds some complexity and maintenance processes, trusting a third party with your private key can be disastrous. In August of 2013, Ladar Levison decided to shut down his own company, Lavabit, an e-mail provider, rather than turn over his users' data to the authorities. Levison courageously pulled the plug on his company rather then turn over the data.

The Lavabit service generated and stored your private key. While this key was encrypted to the user's password, it still enabled the server to have access to the raw key. Even though the Lavabit service alleviated users from managing their private key themselves, it enabled the awkward position for Levison. To use GPG properly, you should never turn over your private key. For a complete analysis of Lavabit, see Moxie Marlinspike's blog post at

Developing a threat model

We introduced the concept of a threat model. A threat model is an analysis of the security of the system that identifies assets, threats, vulnerabilities, and risks. Like any model, the depth of the analysis can vary. In the upcoming section, we'll present a cursory analysis so that you can start thinking about this process. This analysis will also help us understand the capabilities and limitations of our project.

Outlining the key protection system

The first step of our analysis is to clearly provide a description of the system we are trying to protect. In this project, we'll build a logical GPG co-processor using the BBB and the CryptoCape. We'll store the GPG keys on the BBB and then connect to the BBB over Secure Shell (SSH) to use the keys and to run GPG. The CryptoCape will be used to encrypt your GPG key when not in use, known as at rest. We'll add a keypad to collect a numeric code, which will be provided to the TPM. This will allow the TPM to unwrap your GPG key.

The idea for this project was inspired by Peter Gutmann's work on open source cryptographic co-processors (Gutmann, 2000). The BBB, when acting as a co-processor to a host, is extremely flexible, and considering the power usage, relatively high in performance. By running sensitive code that will have access to cleartext encryption keys on a separate hardware, we gain an extra layer of protection (or at the minimum, a layer of indirection).

Identifying the assets we need to protect

Before we can protect anything, we must know what to protect. The most important assets are the GPG private keys. With these keys, an attacker can decrypt past encrypted messages, recover future messages, and use the keys to impersonate you. By protecting your private key, we are also protecting your reputation, which is another asset. Our decrypted messages are also an asset. An attacker may not care about your key if he/she can easily access your decrypted messages. The BBB itself is an asset that needs protecting. If the BBB is rendered inoperable, then an attacker has successfully prevented you from accessing your private keys, which is known as a Denial-Of-Service (DOS).

Threat identification

To identify the threats against our system, we need to classify the capabilities of our adversaries. This is a highly personal analysis, but we can generalize our adversaries into three archetypes: a well funded state actor, a skilled cracker, and a jealous ex-lover. The state actor has nearly limitless resources both from a financial and personnel point of view. The cracker is a skilled operator, but lacks the funding and resources of the state actor. The jealous ex-lover is not a sophisticated computer attacker, but is very motivated to do you harm.

Unfortunately, if you are the target of directed surveillance from a state actor, you probably have much bigger problems than your GPG keys. This actor can put your entire life under monitoring and why go through the trouble of stealing your GPG keys when the hidden video camera in the wall records everything on your screen. Also, it's reasonable to assume that everyone you are communicating with is also under surveillance and it only takes one mistake from one person to reveal your plans for world domination.

The adage by Benjamin Franklin is apropos here: Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead.

However, properly using GPG will protect you from global passive surveillance. When used correctly, neither your Internet Service Provider, nor your e-mail provider, or any passive attacker would learn the contents of your messages. The passive adversary is not going to engage your system, but they could monitor a significant amount of Internet traffic in an attempt to collect it all. Therefore, the confidentiality of your message should remain protected.

We'll assume the cracker trying to harm you is remote and does not have physical access to your BBB. We'll also assume the worst case that the cracker has compromised your host machine. In this scenario there is, unfortunately, a lot that the cracker can perform. He can install a key logger and capture everything, including the password that is typed on your computer. He will not be able to get the code that we'll enter on the BBB; however, he would be able to log in to the BBB when the key is available.

The jealous ex-lover doesn't understand computers very well, but he doesn't need to, because he knows how to use a golf club. He knows that this BBB connected to your computer is somehow important to you because you've talked his ear off about this really cool project that you read in a book. He physically can destroy the BBB and with it, your private key (and probably the relationship as well!).

Identifying the risks

How likely are the previous risks? The risk of active government surveillance in most countries is fortunately low. However, the consequences of this attack are very damaging. The risk of being caught up in passive surveillance by a state actor, as we have learned from Edward Snowden, is very likely. However, by using GPG, we add protection against this threat. An active cracker seeking you harm is probably unlikely. Contracting keystroke-capturing malware, however, is probably not an unreasonable event. A 2013 study by Microsoft concluded that 8 out of every 1,000 computers were infected with malware. You may be tempted to play these odds but let's rephrase this statement: in a group of 125 computers, one is infected with malware. A school or university easily has more computers than this. Lastly, only you can assess the risk of a jealous ex-lover.

For the full Microsoft report, refer to http://blogs.technet.com/b/security/archive/2014/03/31/united-states-malware-infection-rate-more-than-doubles-in-the-first-half-of-2013.aspx.

Mitigating the identified risks

If you find yourself the target of a state, this project alone is not going to help much. We can protect ourselves somewhat from the cracker with two strategies. The first is instead of connecting the BBB to your laptop or computer, you can use the BBB as a standalone machine and transfer files via a microSD card. This is known as an air-gap. With a dedicated monitor and keyboard, it is much less likely for software vulnerabilities to break the gap and infect the BBB. However, this comes as a high level of personal inconvenience, depending on how often you encrypt files. If you consider the risk of running the BBB attached to your computer too high, create an air-gapped BBB for maximum protection. If you deem the risk low, because you've hardened your computer and have other protection mechanism, then keep the BBB attached to the computer.

An air-gapped computer can still be compromised. In 2010, a highly specialized worm known as Stuxnet was able to spread to networked isolated machines through USB flash drives.

The second strategy is to somehow enter the GPG passphrase directly into the BBB without using the host's keyboard. After we complete the project, we'll suggest a mechanism to do this, but it is slightly more complicated. This would eliminate the threat of the key logger since the pin is directly entered.

The mitigation against the ex-lover is to treat your BBB as you would your own wallet, and don't leave it out of your sight. It's slightly larger than you would want, but it's certainly small enough to fit in a small backpack or briefcase.

Summarizing our threat model

Our threat model, while cursory, illustrates the thought process one should go through before using or developing security technologies. The term threat model is specific to the security industry, but it's really just proper planning. The purpose of this analysis is to find logic bugs and prevent you from spending thousands of dollars on high-tech locks for your front door when you keep your backdoor unlocked. Now that we understand what we are trying to protect and why it is important to use GPG, let's build the project.

Generating GPG keys

First, we need to install GPG on the BBB. It is mostly likely already installed, but you can check and install it with the following command:

sudo apt-get install gnupg gnupg-curl

Next, we need to add a secret key. For those that already have a secret key, you can import your secret key ring, secring.gpg, to your ~/.gnupg folder. For those that want to create a new key, on the BBB, proceed to the upcoming section.

This project assumes some familiarity with GPG. If GPG is new to you, the Free Software Foundation maintains the Email Self-Defense guide which is a very approachable introduction to the software and can be found at https://emailselfdefense.fsf.org/en/index.html.

Generating entropy

If you decided to create a new key on the BBB, there are a few technicalities we must consider. First of all, GPG will need a lot of random data to generate the keys. The amount of random data available in the kernel is proportional to the amount of entropy that is available. You can check the available entropy with the following command:

cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail

If this command returns a relatively low number, under 200, then GPG will not have enough entropy to generate a key. On a PC, one can increase the amount of entropy by interacting with the computer such as typing on the keyboard or moving the mouse. However, such sources of entropy are difficult for embedded systems, and in our current setup, we don't have the luxury of moving a mouse.

Fortunately, there are a few tools to help us. If your BBB is running kernel version 3.13 or later, we can use the hardware random number generator on the AM3358 to help us out. You'll need to install the rng-tools package. Once installed, you can edit /etc/default/rng-tools and add the following line to register the hardware random number generated for rng-tools:

HRNGDEVICE=/dev/hwrng

After this, you should start the rng-tools daemon with:

/etc/init.d/rng-tools start

If you don't have /dev/hwrng—and currently, the chips on the CryptoCape do not yet have character device support and aren't available to /dev/hwrng—then you can install haveged. This daemon implements the Hardware Volatile Entropy Gathering and Expansion (HAVEGE) algorithm, the details of which are available at http://www.irisa.fr/caps/projects/hipsor/. This daemon will ensure that the BBB maintains a pool of entropy, which will be sufficient for generating a GPG key on the BBB.

Creating a good gpg.conf file

Before you generate your key, we need to establish some more secure defaults for GPG. As we discussed earlier, it is still not as easy as it should be to use e-mail encryption. Riseup.net, an e-mail provider with a strong social cause, maintains an OpenPGP best practices guide at https://github.com/ioerror/duraconf/raw/master/configs/gnupg/gpg.conf and save as your ~/.gnupg/gpg.conf file. The configuration is well commented and you can refer to the best practices guide available at Riseup.net for more information. There are three entries, however, that you should modify. The first is default-key, which is the fingerprint of your primary GPG key. Later in this article, we'll show you how to retrieve that fingerprint. We can't perform this action now because we don't have a key yet. The second is keyserver-options ca-cert-file, which is the certificate authority for the keyserver pool. Keyservers host your public keys and a keyserver pool is a redundant collection of keyservers. The instructions on Riseup.net gives the details on how to download and install that certificate. Lastly, you can use Tor to fetch updates on your keys.

The act of you requesting a public key from a keyserver signals that you have a potential interest in communicating with the owner of that key. This metadata might be more interesting to a passive adversary than the contents of your message, since it reveals your social network. Tor is apt at protecting traffic analysis. You probably don't want to store your GPG keys on the same BBB as your bridge, so a second BBB would help here. On your GPG BBB, you need to only run Tor as a client, which is its default configuration. Then you can update keyserver-options http-proxy to point to your Tor SOCKS proxy running on localhost.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) provides some hypothetical examples on the telling nature of metadata, for example, They (the government) know you called the suicide prevention hotline from the Golden Gate Bridge. But the topic of the call remains a secret. Refer to the EFF blog post at https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/why-metadata-matters for more details.

Generating the key

Now you can generate your GPG key. Follow the on screen instructions and don't include a comment. Depending on your entropy source, this could take a while. This example took 10 minutes using haveged as the entropy collector. There are various opinions on what to set as the expiration date. If this is your first GPG, try one year at first. You can always make a new key or extend the same one. If you set the key to never expire and you lose the key, by forgetting the passphrase, people will still think it's valid unless you revoke it. Also, be sure to set the user ID to a name that matches some sort of identification, which will make it easier for people to verify that the holder of the private key is the same person as a certified piece of paper. The command to create a new key is gpg –-gen-key:

Please select what kind of key you want:
   (1) RSA and RSA (default)
   (2) DSA and Elgamal
   (3) DSA (sign only)
   (4) RSA (sign only)
Your selection? 1
RSA keys may be between 1024 and 4096 bits long.
What keysize do you want? (2048) 4096
Requested keysize is 4096 bits
Please specify how long the key should be valid.
         0 = key does not expire
     <n> = key expires in n days
     <n>w = key expires in n weeks
     <n>m = key expires in n months
     <n>y = key expires in n years
Key is valid for? (0) 1y
Key expires at Sat 06 Jun 2015 10:07:07 PM UTC
Is this correct? (y/N) y
 
You need a user ID to identify your key; the software constructs the user ID
from the Real Name, Comment and Email Address in this form:
   "Heinrich Heine (Der Dichter) <[email protected]>"
 
Real name: Tyrone Slothrop
Email address: [email protected]
Comment:
You selected this USER-ID:
   "Tyrone Slothrop <[email protected]>"
 
Change (N)ame, (C)omment, (E)mail or (O)kay/(Q)uit? O
You need a Passphrase to protect your secret key.
 
We need to generate a lot of random bytes. It is a good idea to perform some other action (type on the keyboard, move the mouse, utilize the disks) during the prime generation; this gives the random number generator a better chance to gain enough entropy.
......+++++
..+++++
 
gpg: key 0xABD9088171345468 marked as ultimately trusted
public and secret key created and signed.
 
gpg: checking the trustdb
gpg: 3 marginal(s) needed, 1 complete(s) needed, PGP trust model
gpg: depth: 0 valid:   1 signed:   0 trust: 0-, 0q, 0n, 0m, 0f, 1u
gpg: next trustdb check due at 2015-06-06
pub   4096R/0xABD9088171345468 2014-06-06 [expires: 2015-06-06]
     Key fingerprint = CBF9 1404 7214 55C5 C477 B688 ABD9 0881 7134 5468
uid                 [ultimate] Tyrone Slothrop <[email protected]>
sub   4096R/0x9DB8B6ACC7949DD1 2014-06-06 [expires: 2015-06-06]
 
gpg --gen-key 320.62s user 0.32s system 51% cpu 10:23.26 total

From this example, we know that our secret key is 0xABD9088171345468. If you end up creating multiple keys, but use just one of them more regularly, you can edit your gpg.conf file and add the following line:

default-key 0xABD9088171345468

Postgeneration maintenance

In order for people to send you encrypted messages, they need to know your public key. Having your public key server can help distribute your public key. You can post your key as follows, and replace the fingerprint with your primary key ID:

gpg --send-keys 0xABD9088171345468

GPG does not rely on third parties and expects you to perform key management. To ease this burden, the OpenPGP standards define the Web-of-Trust as a mechanism to verify other users' keys. Details on how to participate in the Web-of-Trust can be found in the GPG Privacy Handbook at https://www.gnupg.org/gph/en/manual/x334.html.

You are also going to want to create a revocation certificate. A revocation certificate is needed when you want to revoke your key. You would do this when the key has been compromised, say if it was stolen. Or more likely, if the BBB fails and you can no longer access your key. Generate the certificate and follow the ensuing prompts replacing the ID with your key ID:

gpg --output revocation-certificate.asc --gen-revoke 0xABD9088171345468
 
sec 4096R/0xABD9088171345468 2014-06-06 Tyrone Slothrop <[email protected]>
 
Create a revocation certificate for this key? (y/N) y
Please select the reason for the revocation:
0 = No reason specified
1 = Key has been compromised
2 = Key is superseded
3 = Key is no longer used
Q = Cancel
(Probably you want to select 1 here)
Your decision? 0
Enter an optional description; end it with an empty line:
> 
Reason for revocation: No reason specified
(No description given)
Is this okay? (y/N) y
 
You need a passphrase to unlock the secret key for
user: "Tyrone Slothrop <[email protected]>"
4096-bit RSA key, ID 0xABD9088171345468, created 2014-06-06
 
ASCII armored output forced.
Revocation certificate created.
 
Please move it to a medium which you can hide away; if Mallory gets access to this certificate he can use it to make your key unusable.
It is smart to print this certificate and store it away, just in case your media become unreadable. But have some caution: The print system of your machine might store the data and make it available to others!

Do take the advice and move this file off the BeagleBone. Printing it out and storing it somewhere safe is a good option, or burn it to a CD.

The lifespan of a CD or DVD may not be as long as you think. The United States National Archives Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page on optical storage media states that:

"CD/DVD experiential life expectancy is 2 to 5 years even though published life expectancies are often cited as 10 years, 25 years, or longer."

Refer to their website

Summary

This article covered and taught you about how GPG can protect e-mail confidentiality

Resources for Article:

Further resources on this subject:

Making the Unit Very Mobile - Controlling Legged Movement [Article]

Pulse width modulator [Article]

Home Security by BeagleBone [Article]