![]() These assets consist of intellectual property and stored objects such as keys. Protected Secure AssetsĪll Intel products will have, at a minimum, secure assets owned by Intel. Parties (e.g., system manufacturers and/or OS vendors) may provide additional protections beyond what is provided by Intel. The Protected Secure Assets section explains more about the lifecycles and the addition of assets into the product. Depending on the product, assets may be provisioned by Intel, the Platform Manufacturer, or by the operating system and access to debug capabilities may change to protect those assets. When authorization has not been granted, Intel takes the approach to only allow those debug capabilities that do not expose assets, to meet industry standards or expectations (e.g., IEEE JTAG Boundary Scan), or can be appropriately managed by system firmware or operating system (OS) software.Īvailable debug capabilities change as the product moves through its lifecycle. Authentication has multiple forms ranging from physical possession of the platform to use of cryptography to ensure the entity using the debug capabilities is permitted by the Platform Manufacturer or Intel. ![]() Those limitations are designed to prevent inappropriate access to information or to change behavior of the platform that could be leveraged by malicious or unauthorized users.ĭebug capabilities that could be used to expose secure assets or private user data are designed to allow use only when authenticated. Debug capabilities may be limited to platforms in certain stages of the manufacturing or development lifecycle or only during certain phases of operation (e.g., early boot). Controlling Debug Capabilitiesĭebug capabilities are designed to limit for whom or when those capabilities could be used to perform debug of a platform. The Intel® Debug Protection Technology uses access control mechanisms including authentication of the user to control access to the debug capabilities. These features are designed to enable a person to perform the necessary debug securely and without compromising or putting assets at risk of exposure to unauthorized entities. Therefore, proper protection measures must be implemented to restrict access to these debug capabilities.Ī set of features, referred to as Intel® Debug Protection Technology throughout this paper, are used to control a product’s debug capabilities to help protect secure assets residing on Intel products and private user data being processed within the silicon at run-time. Assets might be compromised due to the privileged access these debug capabilities may provide. A typical system normally contains several assets such as cryptographic keys, configuration data, intellectual property, and sensitive user data, that are stored in registers, memory blocks, fuses and/or otherwise embedded in the silicon. For example, there are debug registers that expose read-write access to internal states of a system that are not visible in a production mode. When a person (i.e., a “debugger”) places a given product in a debug mode, additional access privileges that are not available to a person in the standard operating mode (e.g., production system owned by an end user) become available. Note: the terms “product” and/or “silicon” throughout this document refer specifically to an Intel product and/or Intel silicon. Each Intel product may differ in the specific capabilities included as well as the specific protections designed for the debug capabilities. This technical paper describes the general debug capabilities within Intel's silicon as well as the means designed to protect the debug capabilities. Properly controlling these debug capabilities supports the balance of protecting assets as well as providing a critical tool to Intel, Intel's customers, and Intel's developers. ![]() Intel recognizes that debug capabilities contained within the hardware can be an attack surface used by adversaries to gain access to secure assets and private user data. The term “debug” spans a wide variety of use models from internal hardware debug through debug of performance issues of software running on the silicon. Intel is not unique in this regard other silicon engineering companies include these or similar types of capabilities in order to bring products to market. Unlike software debug features which can be excluded in production software, the nature of silicon development precludes hardware features from being removed in the final production silicon. As a result, Intel silicon contains several different technology capabilities used to debug its silicon. Debug is a critical capability of any system in order to get the system from manufacturing to production to deployment. ![]()
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