Question

Difficulty: MediumHardware and Embedded Systems Security

An agricultural engineering team is deploying autonomous field-monitoring drones that operate in remote, unmonitored locations. To protect the drone flight control systems against unauthorized firmware modifications and ensure hardware-isolated cryptographic key security, which of the following hardware security controls should the engineers implement? (Select TWO.)

  1. Secure Boot integrated with a hardware Root of Trust (RoT) to cryptographically verify bootloader signatures prior to execution.Answer
  2. A hardware-based Trusted Platform Module (TPM) to securely store encryption keys and perform hardware-isolated cryptographic operations.Answer
  3. C
    Asymmetric RSA-4096 key pairs to encrypt high-throughput flight telemetry logs directly to onboard flash media.
  4. D
    Host-based software firewall rules to block unauthorized physical firmware flashing over serial JTAG debug interface pins.

Answer

The engineers should implement Secure Boot integrated with a hardware Root of Trust (RoT) and incorporate a Trusted Platform Module (TPM).
Implementing Secure Boot backed by a hardware Root of Trust guarantees bootloader and firmware integrity by verifying digital signatures before code execution. Additionally, using a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) isolates key generation, measurement, and key storage within tamper-resistant hardware cryptoprocessors.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Evaluate boot integrity requirements against physical firmware tampering.
Secure Boot backed by an immutable hardware Root of Trust (RoT) ensures that only cryptographically signed, verified bootloaders and OS binaries execute during startup.
Prevents unauthorized or malicious firmware modifications from executing on the hardware.
2
Evaluate cryptographic key storage and hardware isolation requirements.
A Trusted Platform Module (TPM) or Secure Element acts as a tamper-resistant cryptoprocessor dedicated to generating and protecting cryptographic keys.
Protects keys from extraction even if the system storage is physically accessed.
3
Analyze distractor options for misapplied controls.
RSA asymmetric encryption is misapplied for bulk storage logging, and software firewalls cannot block physical hardware debug interfaces like JTAG.
Confirms the selection of hardware-level controls.

Key Concept

Hardware Root of Trust and TPM Cryptoprocessor Integration
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