BLE Keyfob Authentication (PROJECT STATUS: DEPLOYED)

The purpose of this project is to provide members of the NETZ39 Hackerspace a new, (sufficiently) secure and easy-to-use way to unlock the door of the Hackerspace.

Principle Structure

This project uses Bluetooth Low Energy 5 as a wireless transport. An authenticated, encrypted and private connection is used with security mode 1 level 4. On top of BLE security, a simple MAC based challenge-response authentication using the BLAKE2s hash function in MAC mode is used.

Components:

• A central (base station) with a NRF52480 chip, here a NRF52840 dongle

• Peripherals (key fobs) using an NRF52832 chip, here a chinese board

Both types of devices use the Zephyr OS with integrated BLE stack.

No real pairing is done with devices in this project. Pairing and bonding is done at when flashing a coin. This step generates the BLE address and keys (IRK, LTK) and the key for application-layer security (SPACEKEY). There is a shell interface at the central to list, add and remove coins.

The central continuously scans for known devices. Upon connection, it immediately tries to turn on encryption and kills the connection if that fails.

The peripherals implement the following GATT services:

The spaceauth service expects a full BLAKE2s block (64B) of data to be sent to the challenge characteristic. Writing to this characteristic is protected and only available with a valid BLE bond. After the challenge has been received, a response (32B) is generated. The first few bytes of the response (as much as fits one MTU) are then indicated to the central.

After that, the central knows it can download the response. The response is then checked with the locally generated response with constant time comparison.

The peripherals shut down when a connection to them is cancelled. They start up again when the button is pressed. Both peripherals and the central kill the connection after a short timeout (5s).

Building locally (on Linux)

1. Follow the installation instructions and install the Zephyr SDK (0.10.3) at the standard location (/opt/zephyr-sdk/).
2. Go to the prod/ folder and run the ./bootstrap.sh script.
3. Run make to build the projects.

Building via Docker

1. Make sure you also cloned the submodules of this repository.
2. Make sure docker is installed and your account is in the docker group.
3. Inside the repository folder, execute docker run -i -t -u $UID -v $(pwd):/data/build maz3max/coinbuild to build using the build image.

How to use?

1. Use the gen_bond.py script in the prod/ folder to generate a central.txt and a coins.txt file. It will also generate a hex-file for the specific coin containing the keys (e.g. coin_d33efc87ed2e.hex). Every coin gets a line in coins.txt.
2. Flash coin_[a-f0-9]{12}\.hex onto the coin.
3. Flash central.hex onto the dongle. Connect to its USB Serial with Baudrate 115200 (on Linux, it is something like this/dev/serial/by-id/usb-ZEPHYR_N39_BLE_KEYKEEPER_0.01-if00)
4. Press enter to make sure you are in the shell
5. use the central_setup command with the contents of your central.txt to initialize the address and the IRK of the central.
6. use the coin add command with the last line of your coins.txt to add the newly compiled coin.
7. reboot if you like and run ble_start to start searching for devices.

Basic Authentication Sequence

Caveats

• Only symmetrical keys are used.
• The authenticated pairing part of the BLE security becomes obsolete because it only refers to pairing which is done via preprogramming here.
• Denial of Service cannot easily be cancelled out when using BLE.
• Like legacy-keys made out of metal, one of the BLE keys could be stolen and misused. (Authentication by ownership)
• Parts are not super-cheap: The central costs 10€ and one keyfob cost 5.50€
• NRF52 Access Port Protection is broken: https://limitedresults.com/2020/06/nrf52-debug-resurrection-approtect-bypass/

FAQ

• Why BLE?
  • the transport had to be wireless, low power and provide connection-level security
  • standardized and widespread technology allows to replace parts of the system easily
• Why Zephyr?
  • very active & helpful community
  • Open-Source BLE Stack
  • supports CMake
  • build system less annoying than Apache Mynewt
• Why not use the cheaper NRF51822?
  • AFAIK this chip does not have enough flash to support the Zephyr BLE stack with enabled security
  • The flash read back protection is also broken: step-by-step guide
• How do I get the software onto the devices?
  • For the NRF52840 dongle, you can use nRF Connect for Desktop
  • For the coins, you have to use a Serial-Wire-Debug Programmer, but a cheap 2€ STLinkV2 clone will do just fine using OpenOCD, See coin readme
• Can I use this project for my own purposes?
  • See LICENSE.md