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Nitrokey 3 Test Firmware Mit Secure Element Support

Heute haben wir ein besonderes Test Firmware Release für den Nitrokey 3 veröffentlicht. Das Highlight ist die vollständige Integration des SE050 Secure Elements in die OpenPGP Card. 

Mit dieser Firmware ist es jetzt möglich, das "Backend" für die kryptographischen Primitiven in der OpenPGP Card auszuwählen. Das bisherige Software-Backend bietet volle Transparenz durch einsehbaren Open-Source Quellcode, ermöglicht jedoch nur die Generierung von maximal RSA-2048 Schlüsseln auf dem Nitrokey 3. Längere RSA-Schlüssel können importiert, aber nicht generiert werden, da die Rechenkapazität des Mikrocontrollers beschränkt ist. Das SE050 Backend ermöglicht nun die Generierung von RSA-3072 und sogar RSA-4096 Schlüsseln, letztere in ungefähr einer Minute. Das Secure Element ist keine Open-Source-Hardware, so dass die Implementierungen der kryptographischen Primitiven nicht einsehbar ist, dafür bietet es jedoch zertifizierte Sicherheit nach FIPS 140-2 Security Level 3-4 und Common Criteria EAL 6+.

Zum Umschalten der Backends wird ein aktuelles pynitrokey benötigt. Damit lässt sich das SE050 Backend wie folgt einschalten:

nitropy nk3 set-config opcard.use_se050_backend true

Bitte die angezeigten Nachrichten beachten. Beim Wechsel des Backends werden alle Daten der OpenPGP Card im vorherigen Backend unwiderruflich gelöscht. Da es sich um eine Test-Firmware handelt, empfehlen wir, vorsichtig zu sein und Sicherungskopien sensibler Daten anzulegen und es noch nicht produktiv zu nutzen. In Zukunft wird der Wechsel des Backends auch über die Nitrokey App 2 möglich sein, an der momentan intensiv gearbeitet wird.

 

22.12.2023

Comments

Submitted by Anonymous on 23. Dezember 2023 - 12:57
Are there actually any OSS secure elements available? I always read that obscurity is part of its security design.
Submitted by meissner on 23. Dezember 2023 - 23:27
The short answer is: no - the longer is: I am not aware of any commercially available ones. Even though RISC-V got some traction recently. Under the line the design itself might be open-source, but the actual (IC) layout could be troublesome to be open-sourced due to NDAs. It's surely not the right point to go into more detail here. But on the other side: it's not really easy to get these certifications, although I am not aware if schematic/design/layout reviews are included for these. Also I would not condemn a product across the board just because it is proprietary - at least an indication for such a judgement would be necessary from my point of view. Nevertheless, generally we would also be happy to see this as Open-Source then we wouldn't have to have this discussion.
Submitted by Kan-Ru Chen on 4. Januar 2024 - 8:37
hXXps://hackaday.com/2023/12/26/a-risc-v-security-key/ FPGA based solution looks promising.
Submitted by someone on 20. Februar 2024 - 10:52
When the next firmware will be release ? and using nitrokey with keepassxc still doesn't require touch presence, is there a fix for that ?
Submitted by meissner on 20. Februar 2024 - 17:14
There will be a new stable release very soon with various FIDO2 detail-fixes - this will not (yet) include touch-presence for HMAC-SHA, yet...
Submitted by Anonymous on 2. März 2024 - 21:58
It's always promising what's happening with the NitroKey. But on the other side it is disillusion. I hoped that the usage of the NitroKey with OpenPGP will be much more effective since the decryption of something took five time longer than with a YubiKey (and I will change from it to NitroKey). But than I cannot update the firmware because of the error "LibraryNotFoundError('Error detecting the version of libcrypto')" of pynitrokey binary for linux (I use devuan/debian). I will wait another longer time in the hope to get a useful product. As I said it is always promising what happens.
Submitted by meissner on 3. März 2024 - 22:19
Hey, the performance should massively improve with the Secure Element being activated. For updating, yes this is a known issue, which happens due to an transient dependency of pynitrokey. If you have installed pynitrokey through pipx (as our docs suggest) there is a workaround at the end of the issue.
Submitted by Anonymous on 24. März 2024 - 14:37
Yes, it is now really fast. Now the Nitrokey 3 Mini is usable for me. Thank you!
Submitted by ebourg on 18. April 2024 - 12:13
Just tested the SE050 backend and I confirm it's faster, a sign operation with a RSA 2048 key goes from 1700 ms to 900 ms, almost two times faster! That's appreciable but still slower than the Yubikey 5 (130 ms). Also the verify pin operation is still slow at 600 ms (only 10 ms on the Yubikey), I hope this can be improved as well.
Submitted by meissner on 22. April 2024 - 12:45
thanks for the feedback and measurements - I think it will be very challenging to reach 130ms / 10ms for these operations. Currently nearly all architecture and design decisions are biased towards maximum security, this obviously introduces the longer roundtrip times. But we are trying to improve here anyways...
Submitted by Anonymous on 17. Juli 2024 - 23:25
Until now I thought the Nitrokey design is purely open-source in hardware and software what is basically the main reason for me to use / buy it. At least regarding the 'secure' element this seems not to be true. Can anyone provide further details here? Can I use the Nitrokey 3 in the future in some kind of 'full open-source' mode while e.g. accepting performance disadvantages?
Submitted by meissner on 22. Juli 2024 - 18:27
Yes, we had the exact same thoughts in mind while designing the Nitrokey 3. Generally, the idea is to make sure you, as a user, is always free to choose from either a software-only mode, which comes with the full transparency of a reviewable code-base through being entirely open-source, or a secure-element mode which leads to some performance improvements and a FIPS certification (the one for the SE050). Using the command listed above you can activate the secure-element mode, but setting this to `false` instead, will deactivate it. Please keep in mind that this only applies to the OpenPGPCard application at this point.

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