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  1. Nerves Hub
  2. Setup

Firmware signing keys

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Last updated 8 months ago

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NervesHub requires cryptographic signatures on all managed firmware. Devices receiving firmware from NervesHub validate signatures. Since firmware is signed before uploading to NervesHub, NervesHub or any service NervesHub uses cannot modify it.

Firmware authentication uses . You need to create at least one public/private key pair and copy the public key part to NervesHub and to devices. NervesHub tooling helps with both. A typical setup has multiple signing keys to support key rotation and "development" keys that are not as protected.

Start by creating a devkey firmware signing key pair:

mix nerves_hub.key create devkey --org my-organisation-name

On success, you'll see the public key. You can confirm using the NervesHub web interface that the public key exists. Private keys are never sent to the NervesHub server. NervesHub requires valid signatures from known keys on all firmware it distributes. Since this command uploads the public key to NervesHub you are now ready to sign firmware with it.

mix nerves_hub.firmware sign myfirmware.fw --key devkey

On authenticating with NervesHub a device will download the available public keys to enable validation of firmware signatures.

Locking a device to keys (optional)

The next step is to make sure that the public key is embedded into the firmware image. This is optional. The device will then use these keys to verify the firmware it receives from a NervesHub server before applying the update. It will ignore other keys available on that NervesHub organisation. This protects the device against anyone tampering with the firmware image between when it was signed by you and when it is installed.

All firmware signing public keys need to be added to your config.exs.

config :nerves_hub_link,
  fwup_public_keys: [
    # devkey
    "bM/O9+ykZhCWx8uZVgx0sU3f0JJX7mqnAVU9VGeuHr4="
  ]

The nerves_hub_link dependency converts key names to public keys at compile time. If you haven't compiled your project yet, run mix firmware now. If you have compiled it, mix won't know to recompile nerves_hub_link due to the configuration change. Force it to recompile by running:

mix deps.compile nerves_hub_link --force
mix firmware

While not shown here, you can export keys for safe storage. Additionally, key creation and firmware signing can be done outside of the mix tooling. The only part that is required is that the firmware signing public keys be added to your config.exs and to the NervesHub server.

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