Arm security alternatives

Abstract

Many real-world scenarios such as protecting DRM, online payments and usage in NFC payments in embedded devices require a trustworthy “trusted execution environment” (TEE) platform. The TEE should run on the ARM architecture. That is popular in embedded devices. Furthermore, past experience has proved that such TEE platform should be available in source code form. Without the source code 3rd parties and user cannot be conducted code review audit. Lack of review put doubt on the system as a trustworthy environment. The popular Android OS supports various TEE implementations. Each TEE OS implementation has its own unique way of deploying trusted applications(trustlets) and its own distinct features. Choosing a proper TEE operating system can be a problem for trust applications developers. When choosing TEE applications developers has many conflicting goals. The developers attempt to ensure that their apps work on as many different Android devices as possible. Furthermore, developers relay on the TEE for certain features and must ensure the suggested TEE provides all the features that they need. We survey multiple ARM TrustZone TEE operating systems that are commonly available and in use today. We wish to provide all the information for IoT vendors and SoC manufacturer to select a suitable TEE.