t_cose implements enough of COSE to support CBOR Web Token, RFC 8392
and Entity Attestation Token (EAT).
This is the COSE_Sign1 part of COSE, RFC 8152.
Implemented in C with minimal dependency – There are three main dependencies: 1) QCBOR, 2) A cryptographic library for ECDSA and SHA-2, 3) C99, <stdint.h>, <stddef.h>, <stdbool.h> and <string.h>. It is intended to be highly portable to different HW, OS's and cryptographic libraries. No #ifdefs or compiler options need to be set for it to run correctly.
Crypto Library Integration Layer – t_cose can work with different cryptographic libraries via a simple integration layer. The integration layer is kept small and simple, just enough for the use cases, so that integration is simpler. An integration layer for Openssl is included (not complete yet).
Secure coding style – Uses a construct called UsefulBuf / q_useful_buf as a discipline for very safe coding and handling of binary data.
Small simple memory model – Malloc is not needed. The signing context is less than 100 bytes. Stack use is light and there is no recursion. The caller supplies the memory to hold the completed COSE_Sign1 and encode/decode contexts so caller has full control of memory usage making it good for embedded implementations that have to run in small fixed memory.
As of December 2019, the code is in reasonable working order and the public interface is fairly stable. There is a crypto adaptaion layer for OpenSSL and for Arm MBed Crypto.
- Add some more tests, particular test vectors from C_COSE or such
- General documentation clean up, spelling checks and formatting.
Except for the crypto library set up, t_cose is very portable and should largely just work in any environment. It needs a few standard libraries and QCBOR (which is also very portable). Hence the rest of this section is about crypto library set up.
Here's three crypto library configurations that are supported. Others can be added with relative ease over time.
This configuration should work instantly on any device and is useful to do quite a large amount of testing with, but can't be put to full commercial use. What it lacks is any integration with an ECDSA implementation so it can't produce real ECDSA signatures. It does however produce some fake signatures called "short-circuit signatures" that are very useful for testing. See header documentation for details on short-circuit sigs.
This configuration (and only this configuration) uses an bundled SHA-256 implementation (SHA-256 is simple and easy to bundle, ECDSA is not).
To use this, edit the makefile for the location of QCBOR and then just do
make -f Makefile.test
This OpenSSL integration supports SHA-256, SHA-384 and SHA-512 with ECDSA to support the COSE algorithms ES256, ES384 and ES512. It is a full and tested integration with OpenSSL crypto.
To use this, edit the makefile for the location of QCBOR and OpenSSL and do:
make -f Makefile.ossl
The specific things that Makefile.ossl does is:
- Links the crypto_adapters/t_cose_openssl_crypto.o into libt_cose.a
- Links test/test/t_cose_make_openssl_test_key.o into the test binary
#define T_COSE_USE_OPENSSL_CRYPTO
Note that the internally supplied b_con_hash is not used in this case by virtue of the Makefile not linking to it.
This build configuration works for Arm PSA Crypto compatible libraries like the MBed Crypto Library.
This integration supports SHA-256, SHA-384 and SHA-512 with ECDSA to support the COSE algorithms ES256, ES384 and ES512. It is a full implementation but needs on-target testing.
To use this, edit the makefile for the location of CBOR and your PSA-compatible cryptographic library and do:
make -f Makefile.psa
The specific things that Makefile.psa does is:
* Links the crypto_adapters/t_cose_psa_crypto.o into libt_cose.a
* Links test/test/t_cose_make_psa_test_key.o into the test binary
* #define T_COSE_USE_PSA_CRYPTO
Note that the internally supplied b_con_hash is not used in this case by virtue of the Makefile not linking to it.
Following are some notes on things discovered doing this integration.
PSA Crypto is an API that Arm is standardizing. As of December 2019 it is close to complete after some years of development. It seems the 1.0 version is soon to be released. The API has evolved over these years and some of the earlier versions are not compatible with the current ones. There are commercial implementations using earlier APIs so this variation must be handled by the crypto adpatation layer here. There are no official mechanisms, like a #define to help handle variations in these older versions.
The MBed Crypto Library is an implementation of the PSA Crypto API and is versions separately. Presumably there are or will be implementations of the PSA Crypto API that are not the MBed Crypto Library.
t_cose has been made to work against the released 1.1.0 version of MBed released in June 2019 and the 2.0.0 version released in September 2019. Also, it works against the 1.1 version that is in TF-M which has different internals than the 1.1.0 version on the public GitHub.
The PSA Crypto API in MBed 1.1.0 is different from that in MBed 2.0.0.
t_cose has one configuration that covers both which hinges off a
#define that happens to occur in 1.1.0 and not in 2.0.0. It can auto-detect
which is which so you shouldn't have to worry about it. To overide
the auto-detect #define T_COSE_USE_PSA_CRYPTO_FROM_MBED_CRYPTO11
or #define T_COSE_USE_PSA_CRYPTO_FROM_MBED_CRYPTO20.
Presumably, this will soon become less messy with the release of PSA Crypto 1.0. Presumably the older implementations like MBed Crypto 1.1 will stop being used. Also, PSA Crypto 1.0 has official #defines to manage API versions.
The functions that t_cose needs from the crypto library are all defined in src/t_cose_crypto.h. This is a porting or adaption layer. There are no #ifdefs in the main t_cose code for different crypto libraries. When it needs a crypto function it just calls the interface defined in t_cose_crypto.h.
When integrating t_cose with a new cryptographic library, what is necessary is to write some code, an "adaptor", that implements t_cose_crypto.h using the new target cryptographic library. This can be done without changes to any t_cose code for many cryptographic libraries. See the interface documentation in t_cose_crypto.h for what needs to be implemented.
That said, there is one case where t_cose source code needs to be modified. This is for hash algorithm implementations that are linked into and run inline with t_cose and that have a context structure. In this case t_cose_crypto.h should be modified to use that context structure. Use the OpenSSL configuration as an example.
To complete the set up for a new cryptographic library and test it, a new test adaptation file is also needed. This file makes public key pairs of the correct type for use with testing. This file is usually named test/t_cose_make_xxxx_test_key.c and is linked in with the test app. The keys it makes are passed through t_cose untouched, through the t_cose_crypto.h interface into the underlying crypto.
These are approximate numbers for 64-bit x86 code optimized for size
- Common to signing and verifying: 515
- Signing: 920 (742)
- Verify: 1596
- OpenSSL adaptor layer: 609
- Total: 3710
- Signing only total: 1813
- Verify only total: 2509
Malloc is not used.
Stack usage is less than 1KB for signing and for encryption.
The design is such that only one copy of the COSE_Sign1 need be in memory. It makes use of special features in QCBOR to accomplish this.
The payload to sign must be in one contiguous buffer and be passed in. It can be allocated however the caller wishes, even in ROM, since it is only read.
A buffer to hold the signed COSE result must be passed in. It must be about 100 bytes larger than the combined size of the payload and key id for ECDSA 256. It can be allocated however the caller wishes.
In addition to the above memory usage, the crypto library will use some stack and / or heap memory. This will vary quite a bit by crypto library. Some may use malloc. Some may not.
So far no support for RSA is available, but since the keys and signatures are much bigger, it will up the memory usage a lot and may require use of malloc.
The OpenSSL library does use malloc, even with ECDSA. Another implementation of ECDSA might not use malloc, as the keys are small enough.
QCBOR uses camelCase and t_cose follows Arm's coding guidelines resulting in code with mixed styles. For better or worse, an Arm-style version of UsefulBuf is created and used and so there is a duplicate of UsefulBuf. The two are identical. They just have different names.
- The payload input and output and the signed structure input and output must be in contiguous memory.
- Doesn't handle COSE string algorithm IDs. Only COSE integer algorithm IDs are handled. Thus far no string algorithm IDs have been assigned by IANA.
- No way to add custom headers when creating signed messages or process them during verification.
- Only ECDSA is supported so far (facilities are available to add others).
- Does not handle CBOR indefinite length strings (indefinite length maps and arrays are handled).
- Counter signatures are not supported.
- Tamas Ban for lots code review comments, design ideas and porting to ARM PSA.
- Rob Coombs, Shebu Varghese Kuriakose and other ARM folks for sponsorship.
t_cose is available under the 3-Clause BSD License.