Please suggest a completely open source ARM board with Cortex A53/A7

Dutch_Master · 2019-07-18 15:03:00

You seem to be obsessed with "open source evarything', assuming because you "have reservations" about people trying to spy on you. That's fine, but if you're that paranoid about privacy, don't use a computer you haven't build from scratch yourself! Design your own hardware, using Open Source is quite easy: Kicad. Make your own PCB's, now that's a challenge if you know nowt about electronics. For chips, use un-programmed FPGA's. Not exactly open source, but as the specific chips in your system cannot be identified at the time of manufacturing, there's little risk you're targeted via this route (s'cuse the pun) Write your own bootloader, booting a plain, but patched (by yourself) Linux kernel. Next, create the entire ecosystem for your desktop, or rely on GNU/Hurd to port their software to your specific hardware. Not impossible, but quite unrealistic.

Maybe you should try being less paranoid about privacy, it's healthier too

PS: the suggestion to learn more about what certain phrases mean in FLOSS-land is highly recommended.

yeti · 2019-07-18 15:12:31

Dutch_Master wrote:

(((...))), but if you're that paranoid about privacy, don't use a computer you haven't build from scratch yourself! (((...))) FPGA (((...)))

...and use only FPGAs which can be handled with OSS toolchains.

I'd really like to test this route, even if the current limit for FPGAs with OSS toolchains may be a sub-100MHz 32bitter.

How about starting an own thread (or better: wiki page!) for these thoughts?

Dutch_Master · 2019-07-18 15:49:41

In the spirit of OSS: you're free to take my idea and run with it

As a matter of fact, I have been thinking about this earlier (hence the suggestion) but for the new 5G mobile phone network, given the controversy around a certain (and very large!) Asian supplier. But I simply don't have the time, nor inclination, to pursue this idea, also lacking knowledge about 5G standards and design spec's is a hindrance here. Then again, a lack of knowledge can be fixed and time can be made if things get urgent enough

alupoj · 2019-07-18 23:20:42

Dutch_Master wrote:

You seem to be obsessed with "open source evarything', assuming because you "have reservations" about people trying to spy on you. That's fine, but if you're that paranoid about privacy, don't use a computer you haven't build from scratch yourself! Design your own hardware, using Open Source is quite easy: Kicad. Make your own PCB's, now that's a challenge if you know nowt about electronics. For chips, use un-programmed FPGA's. Not exactly open source, but as the specific chips in your system cannot be identified at the time of manufacturing, there's little risk you're targeted via this route (s'cuse the pun) Write your own bootloader, booting a plain, but patched (by yourself) Linux kernel. Next, create the entire ecosystem for your desktop, or rely on GNU/Hurd to port their software to your specific hardware. Not impossible, but quite unrealistic.
Maybe you should try being less paranoid about privacy, it's healthier too
PS: the suggestion to learn more about what certain phrases mean in FLOSS-land is highly recommended.

Most likely you know, personal time is the most valuable resource which is hard or impossible to restore.
You are trolling like a ganstalker from some 3 letter agency just to waster target life. Also I am not interested to self develop in any area out of my specialization and hardware design is out of my scope for sure.

Building own PC is not a way to go for me for sure, I am just looking for different ready solutions and possibilities to combine them.

For example: Pentium 1 computer from 1997 running modern OpenBSD with 16 bit Ethernet card without DMA connecting to a Cortex A7 single board like Orange PI which has a USB and Linux for connecting Nitrokey looks more realistic than your fancies about self make DIYs.

Pentium1+OpenBSD -> 16bit Ethernet PCMCIA -> OrangePI+Gentoo->Nitrokey
How about this?

Are obsolete P1 backdoors old enough to prevent active invasion into my LAN?

There are still many other variants to try for a more secure textual console like for example 8bit ZX spectrum.

Last edited by alupoj (2019-07-18 23:45:43)

alupoj · 2019-07-19 13:40:18

ToxicExMachina wrote:

It's not criteria of open source. Microcode is conception from the middle of XX century.

Uhaha, who cares which century from a conception of X86 microcode is if it's current implementation is TOP SECRET proprietary with integrated NSA backdoors and trojans.

Last edited by alupoj (2019-07-19 14:18:02)

alupoj · 2019-07-19 15:50:42

Panopticon wrote:

Enough of the loony tunes, This is a board forum about the Devuan operating system, not x86 god mode. Go away

You are wrong. This area is an offtopic for Devuan and therefore non offtopic (ontopic) for anything else for example like CPU backdoors.

I would prefer you to go away from my rightful and correct thread in this offtopic for Devuan area.

Last edited by alupoj (2019-07-21 14:52:33)

yeti · 2019-07-19 15:59:50

Panopticon wrote:

Enough of the loony tunes, This is a board forum about the Devuan operating system, not x86 god mode. Go away

Being aware of god mode and other mean ingredients is not a bad thing.
Devuan doesn't float in the air far away from these problems.
Probably most Devuan installs still live in the X86 or AMD64 digitope.

An odyssey:
—▷ GOD MODE UNLOCKED - Hardware Backdoors in x86 CPUs

Head_on_a_Stick · 2019-07-19 17:54:16

The POWER9 microarchitecture is open source and Raptor's offerings are blob-free but it's aimed at high TPD servers rather than low power hacker boards.

alupoj · 2019-07-19 18:04:21

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

The POWER9 microarchitecture is open source and Raptor's offerings are blob-free but it's aimed at high TPD servers rather than low power hacker boards.

While Raptor motherboard is probably free of proprietary blobs, the POWER9 CPU is most likely not?
And all of them are not affordable for me.

Last edited by alupoj (2019-07-19 18:05:16)

Head_on_a_Stick · 2019-07-19 18:11:30

alupoj wrote:

the POWER9 CPU is most likely not?

IBM's servers run proprietary firmware for the CPU but Raptor use open source versions:

https://wiki.raptorcs.com/wiki/OpenPOWER_Firmware

alupoj wrote:

And all of them are not affordable for me.

+1

ToxicExMachina · 2019-07-20 05:42:20

alupoj wrote:

ToxicExMachina wrote:
OpenRISC, RISC-V, old ARM versions implementation, different MIPS cores, etc. You can check some of them at opencores.org
RISC-V is promising project because large organizations decided to support it.
I would be glad to try RISC-V, but where to get an affordable board?
What do you mean under old ARM version? Is Cortex A7 old enough to be secure enough?
I was looking for a board with open source boot loader when it would be difficult to inject an invisible and undetectable virtualization trojan on the factory or by a third party blobbed software which could reflash firmwares silently.

1. The most affordable RISC-V board is any cheap devkit with FPGA and i/o ports. You can flash RISC-V based SoC.

2. Older ARM versions - older than modern ARM.

3. Buy board or laptop compatible with upstream coreboot.

ToxicExMachina · 2019-07-20 05:44:03

alupoj wrote:

ToxicExMachina wrote:
different MIPS cores
Can routers running LibreCMC be treated more secure in terms of my control over their boot loader?

Bootloader is not the thing you should worry about right now.

ToxicExMachina · 2019-07-20 05:49:02

alupoj wrote:

ToxicExMachina wrote:
BIOS is opensource: https://www.seabios.org/
UEFI is also opensource: https://www.tianocore.org/
SeaBIOS originally looks like a BIOS for virtual machine guests.
Can SeaBIOS be used directly on any physical motherboard without Coreboot hack which I already mentioned?
Is not SeaBIOS just one of many other possible payloads like GRUB or KEXEC, etc. for Coreboot/Libreboot?
Where would be SeaBIOS without Coreboot/Libreboot projects which actually are apposite of what was intended for "openness" (actually lack of openness) of X86 boot loader?

It doesn't matter. Every vendor had own BIOS implementation because it totally depends on hardware by design. BIOS is a part of MS-DOS designed to provide abstraction layer for compatibility purposes. SeaBIOS is another implementation. In this case Coreboot+SeaBIOS == BIOS.

ToxicExMachina · 2019-07-20 05:53:33

alupoj wrote:

I agree with you that X86 standard is versatile and open for vendors to produce X86 hardware, but is the most unfriendly for people who would like to write their own open source boot loader, that is what I primary meant under open source.

One word: coreboot

ToxicExMachina · 2019-07-20 05:59:13

alupoj wrote:

While Raptor motherboard is probably free of proprietary blobs, the POWER9 CPU is most likely not?
And all of them are not affordable for me.

If you want affordable computer with blobless firmware - go buy Thinkpad T60 and flash libreboot.

alupoj · 2019-07-20 06:16:35

ToxicExMachina wrote:

alupoj wrote:
While Raptor motherboard is probably free of proprietary blobs, the POWER9 CPU is most likely not?
And all of them are not affordable for me.
If you want affordable computer with blobless firmware - go buy Thinkpad T60 and flash libreboot.

I have it, but CPU itself does not seem to be trustworthy.
IMHO Pentium 1 + OpenBSD looks more interesting even without Libreboot. I have a couple of them too, just wonder how to combine all these things together to produce a more secure working place.

Anyway all DMA extension boards shall be moved to another host and connected via IP to avoid DMA attacks from firmwares of attached devices like SATA storage, USB dongles, PCI expansion cards, etc.

Last edited by alupoj (2019-07-22 01:14:08)

alupoj · 2019-07-20 06:20:51

ToxicExMachina wrote:

alupoj wrote:
ToxicExMachina wrote:
BIOS is opensource: https://www.seabios.org/
UEFI is also opensource: https://www.tianocore.org/
SeaBIOS originally looks like a BIOS for virtual machine guests.
Can SeaBIOS be used directly on any physical motherboard without Coreboot hack which I already mentioned?
Is not SeaBIOS just one of many other possible payloads like GRUB or KEXEC, etc. for Coreboot/Libreboot?
Where would be SeaBIOS without Coreboot/Libreboot projects which actually are apposite of what was intended for "openness" (actually lack of openness) of X86 boot loader?
It doesn't matter. Every vendor had own BIOS implementation because it totally depends on hardware by design. BIOS is a part of MS-DOS designed to provide abstraction layer for compatibility purposes. SeaBIOS is another implementation. In this case Coreboot+SeaBIOS == BIOS.

The problem with X86 BIOS as already mentioned earlier is the whole thing about X86 initialization process is proprietary unlike ARM where initialization of several popular (not all boards of course, especially proprietary are Mobile ARMs) development single boards is documented and even with an official open source uboot.

Last edited by alupoj (2019-07-20 07:56:34)

alupoj · 2019-07-20 06:23:59

ToxicExMachina wrote:

2. Older ARM versions - older than modern ARM.

Please recommend an example of such an ARM board.

Last edited by alupoj (2019-07-22 01:19:40)

Head_on_a_Stick · 2019-07-20 09:26:21

ToxicExMachina wrote:

If you want affordable computer with blobless firmware - go buy Thinkpad T60 and flash libreboot.

The hard drive controller in that machine contains embedded firmware which is powerful enough to pwn the device.

Coreboot don't mention this on their site, strangely. Neither do Raptor. But then I suppose they have businesses to run...

alupoj · 2019-07-20 09:36:46

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

ToxicExMachina wrote:
If you want affordable computer with blobless firmware - go buy Thinkpad T60 and flash libreboot.
The hard drive controller in that machine contains embedded firmware which is powerful enough to pwn the device.

Would iSCSI or NFS help if using such a chain of connection to disks:

T60 -> iSCSI (IP over Ethernet) -> OrangePI -> SATA

?

Last edited by alupoj (2019-07-22 01:18:50)

Head_on_a_Stick · 2019-07-20 18:11:01

No.

alupoj · 2019-07-20 22:23:28

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

No.

Can you please explain in more details why no?
How a SATA firmware on HostB (in a disk controller or disk) can influence HostA if I have a chain like this:

HostA ZFS over local LUKS (cryptsetup) -> iSCSI over Ethernet -> HostB -> SATA -> Disk

What HostB can do bad to HostA RAM? Does it have any access to HostA RAM?
The only bad thing seems to be just damaging data on the disk by the disk itself? But it will be instantly indicated by ZFS on HostA.

If iSCSI is not secure enough we still have many other network block and file protocols even like SSHFS,
and still no?

Last edited by alupoj (2019-07-20 22:30:28)

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#26 2019-07-18 15:03:00

Re: Please suggest a completely open source ARM board with Cortex A53/A7

#27 2019-07-18 15:12:31

Re: Please suggest a completely open source ARM board with Cortex A53/A7

#28 2019-07-18 15:49:41

Re: Please suggest a completely open source ARM board with Cortex A53/A7

#29 2019-07-18 23:20:42

Re: Please suggest a completely open source ARM board with Cortex A53/A7

#30 2019-07-19 13:40:18

Re: Please suggest a completely open source ARM board with Cortex A53/A7

#31 2019-07-19 15:50:42

Re: Please suggest a completely open source ARM board with Cortex A53/A7

#32 2019-07-19 15:59:50

Re: Please suggest a completely open source ARM board with Cortex A53/A7

#33 2019-07-19 17:54:16

Re: Please suggest a completely open source ARM board with Cortex A53/A7

#34 2019-07-19 18:04:21

Re: Please suggest a completely open source ARM board with Cortex A53/A7

#35 2019-07-19 18:11:30

Re: Please suggest a completely open source ARM board with Cortex A53/A7

#36 2019-07-20 05:42:20

Re: Please suggest a completely open source ARM board with Cortex A53/A7

#37 2019-07-20 05:44:03

Re: Please suggest a completely open source ARM board with Cortex A53/A7

#38 2019-07-20 05:49:02

Re: Please suggest a completely open source ARM board with Cortex A53/A7

#39 2019-07-20 05:53:33

Re: Please suggest a completely open source ARM board with Cortex A53/A7

#40 2019-07-20 05:59:13

Re: Please suggest a completely open source ARM board with Cortex A53/A7

#41 2019-07-20 06:16:35

Re: Please suggest a completely open source ARM board with Cortex A53/A7

#42 2019-07-20 06:20:51

Re: Please suggest a completely open source ARM board with Cortex A53/A7

#43 2019-07-20 06:23:59

Re: Please suggest a completely open source ARM board with Cortex A53/A7

#44 2019-07-20 09:26:21

Re: Please suggest a completely open source ARM board with Cortex A53/A7

#45 2019-07-20 09:36:46

Re: Please suggest a completely open source ARM board with Cortex A53/A7

#46 2019-07-20 18:11:01

Re: Please suggest a completely open source ARM board with Cortex A53/A7

#47 2019-07-20 22:23:28

Re: Please suggest a completely open source ARM board with Cortex A53/A7

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