MCUboot release notes

Table of Contents {:toc}

Version 1.8.0

The 1.8.0 release of MCUboot contains numerous fixes, and adds support for the NuttX RTOS, and the Espressif ESP32 SDK.

About this release

Add support for the NuttX RTOS.
Add support for the Espressif ESP32 SDK.
boot_serial changed to use cddl-gen, which removes the dependency on tinycbor.
Add various hooks to be able to change how image data is accessed.
Cypress supports Mbed TLS for encryption.
Support using Mbed TLS for ECDSA. This can be useful if Mbed TLS is brought in for another reason.
Add simulator support for testing direct-XIP and ramload.
Support Mbed TLS 3.0. Updates the submodule for Mbed TLS to 3.0.
Enable direct-xip mode in Mbed-OS port.
extract bootutil_public library, a common interface for MCUboot and the application.
Allow to boot primary image if secondary one is unreachable.
Add AES256 image encryption support.
Add Multiimage boot for direct-xip and ram-load mode.
Cargo files moved to top level, now cargo test can be run from the top level directory.
Fault injection tests use updated TF-M.
Thingy:53 now supports multi-image DFU.
ram load and image encryption can be used together, allowing the entire contents of flash to always remain encrypted.

Security fixes

GHSA-gcxh-546h-phg4 has been published. There is not a fix at this time, but a caution to be sure to follow the instructions carefully, and make sure that the development keys in the repo are never used in a production system.

Version 1.7.0

The 1.7.0 release of MCUboot adds support for the Mbed-OS platform, Equal slots (direct-xip) upgrade mode, RAM loading upgrade mode, hardening against hardware level fault injection and timing attacks and single image mode. There are bug fixes, and associated imgtool updates as well.

About this release

Initial support for the Mbed-OS platform.
Added possibility to enter deep sleep mode after MCUboot app execution for cypress platform.
Added hardening against hardware level fault injection and timing attacks.
Introduced Abstract crypto primitives to simplify porting.
Added RAM-load upgrade mode.
Renamed single-image mode to single-slot mode.
Allow larger primary slot in swap-move
Fixed boostrapping in swap-move mode.
Fixed issue causing that interrupted swap-move operation might brick device if the primary image was padded.
Abstracting MCUboot crypto functions for cleaner porting
Droped flash_area_read_is_empty() porting API.
boot/zephyr: Added watchdog feed on nRF devices. See CONFIG_BOOT_WATCHDOG_FEED option.
boot/zephyr: Added patch for turning off cache for Cortex M7 before chain-loading.
boot/zephyr: added option to relocate interrupts to application
boot/zephyr: clean ARM core configuration only when selected by user
boot/boot_serial: allow nonaligned last image data chunk
imgtool: added custom TLV support.
imgtool: added possibility to set confirm flag for hex files as well.
imgtool: Print image digest during verify.

Zephyr-RTOS compatibility

This release of MCUboot works with the Zephyr “main” at the time of the release. It was tested as of has 7a3b253ce. This version of MCUboot also works with the Zephyr v2.4.0, however it is recommended to enable CONFIG_MCUBOOT_CLEANUP_ARM_CORE while using that version.

Version 1.6.0

The 1.6.0 release of MCUboot adds support for the PSOC6 platform, X25519 encrypted images, rollback protection, hardware keys, and a shared boot record to communicate boot attestation information to later boot stages. There are bug fixes, and associated imgtool updates as well.

About this release

Initial support for the Cypress PSOC6 plaformt. This platform builds using the Cypress SDK, which has been added as submodules.
CBOR decoding in serial recovery replaced by code generated from a CDDL description.
Add support for X25519 encrypted images.
Add rollback protection. There is support for a HW rollback counter (which must be provided as part of the platform), as well as a SW solution that protects against some types of rollback.
Add an optional boot record in shared memory to communicate boot attributes to later-run code.
Add support for hardware keys.
Various fixes to work with the latest Zephyr version.

Security issues addressed

CVE-2020-7595 “xmlStringLenDecodeEntities in parser.c in libxml2 2.9.10 has an infinite loop in a certain end-of-file situation.” Fix by updating a dependency in documentation generation.

Zephyr-RTOS compatibility

This release of MCUboot works the Zephyr “main” at the time of the release. It was tested as of has 1a89ca1238. When Zephyr v2.3.0 is released, there will be a possible 1.6.1 or similar release of Zephyr if needed to address any issues. There also may be branch releases of MCUboot specifically for the current version of Zephyr, e.g. v1.6.0-zephyr-2.2.1.

Version 1.5.0

The 1.5.0 release of MCUboot adds support for encrypted images using ECIES with secp256r1 as an Elliptic Curve alternative to RSA-OAEP. A new swap method was added which allows for upgrades without using a scratch partition. There are also lots of bug fixes, extra simulator testing coverage and some imgtool updates.

About this release

TLVs were updated to use 16-bit lengths (from previous 8). This should work with no changes for little-endian targets, but will break compatibility with big-endian targets.
A benchmark framework was added to Zephyr
ed25519 signature validation can now build without using Mbed TLS by relying on a bundled tinycrypt based sha-512 implementation.
imgtool was updated to correctly detect trailer overruns by image.
Encrypted image TLVs can be saved in swap metadata during a swap upgrade instead of the plain AES key.
imgtool can dump private keys in C format (getpriv command), which can be added as decryption keys. Optionally can remove superfluous fields from the ASN1 by passing it --minimal.
Lots of other smaller bugs fixes.
Added downgrade prevention feature (available when the overwrite-based image update strategy is used)

Known issues

TLV size change breaks compatibility with big-endian targets.

Version 1.4.0

The 1.4.0 release of MCUboot primarily adds support for multi-image booting. With this release, MCUboot can manage two images that can be updated independently. With this, it also supports additions to the TLV that allow these dependencies to be specified.

Multi-image support adds backward-incompatible changes to the format of the images: specifically adding support for protected TLV entries. If multiple images and dependencies are not used, the images will be compatible with previous releases of MCUboot.

About this release

Fixed CVE-2019-5477, and CVE-2019-16892. These fix issue with dependencies used in the generation of the documentation on github.
Numerous code cleanups and refactorings
Documentation updates for multi-image features
Update imgtool.py to support the new features
Updated the Mbed TLS submodule to current stable version 2.16.3
Moved the Mbed TLS submodule from within sim/mcuboot-sys to ext. This will make it easier for other board supports to use this code.
Added some additional overflow and bound checks to data in the image header, and TLV data.
Add a -x (or --hex_addr) flag to imgtool to set the base address written to a hex-format image. This allows the image to be flashed at an offset, without having to use additional tools to modify the image.

Version 1.3.1

The 1.3.1 release of MCUboot consists mostly of small bug fixes and updates. There are no breaking changes in functionality. This release should work with Mynewt 1.6.0 and up, and any Zephyr main after sha f51e3c296040f73bca0e8fe1051d5ee63ce18e0d.

About this release

Fixed a revert interruption bug
Added ed25519 signing support
Added RSA-3072 signing support
Allow ec256 to run on CC310 interface
Some preparation work was done to allow for multi image support, which should land in 1.4.0. This includes a simulator update for testing multi-images, and a new name for slot0/slot1 which are now called “primary slot” and “secondary slot”.
Other minor bugfixes and improvements

Version 1.3.0

The 1.3.0 release of MCUboot brings in many fixes and updates. There are no breaking changes in functionality. Many of the changes are refactorings that will make the code easier to maintain going forward. In addition, support has been added for encrypted images. See the docs for more information.

About this release

Modernize the Zephyr build scripts.
Add a ptest utility to help run the simulator in different configurations.
Migrate the simulator to Rust 2018 edition. The sim now requires at least Rust 1.32 to build.
Simulator cleanups. The simulator code is now built the same way for every configuration, and queries the MCUboot code for how it was compiled.
Abstract logging in MCUboot. This was needed to support the new logging system used in Zephyr.
Add multiple flash support. Allows slot1/scratch to be stored in an external flash device.
Add support for encrypted images.
Add support for flash devices that read as ‘0’ when erased.
Add support to Zephyr for the nrf52840_pca10059. This board supports serial recovery over USB with CDC ACM.
imgtool is now also available as a python package on pypi.org.
Add an option to erase flash pages progressively during recovery to avoid possible timeouts (required especially by serial recovery using USB with CDC ACM).
imgtool: big-endian support
imgtool: saves in intel-hex format when output filename has .hex extension; otherwise saves in binary format.

Version 1.2.0

The 1.2.0 release of MCUboot brings a lot of fixes/updates, where much of the changes were on the boot serial functionality and imgtool utility. There are no breaking changes in MCUboot functionality, but some of the CLI parameters in imgtool were changed (either removed or added or updated).

About this release

imgtool accepts .hex formatted input
Logging system is now configurable
Most Zephyr configuration has been switched to Kconfig
Build system accepts .pem files in build system to autogenerate required key arrays used internally
Zephyr build switched to using built-in flash_map and TinyCBOR modules
Serial boot has substantially decreased in space usage after refactorings
Serial boot build doesn’t require newlib-c anymore on Zephyr
imgtool updates:
- “create” subcommand can be used as an alias for “sign”
- To allow imgtool to always perform the check that firmware does not overflow the status area, --slot-size was added and --pad was updated to act as a flag parameter.
- --overwrite-only can be passed if not using swap upgrades
- --max-sectors can be used to adjust the maximum amount of sectors that a swap can handle; this value must also be configured for the bootloader
- --pad-header substitutes --included-header with reverted semantics, so it’s not required for firmware built by Zephyr build system

Known issues

None

Version 1.1.0

The 1.1.0 release of MCUboot brings a lot of fixes/updates to its inner workings, specially to its testing infrastructure which now enables a more thorough quality assurance of many of the available options. As expected of the 1.x.x release cycle, no breaking changes were made. From the tooling perpective the main addition is newt/imgtool support for password protected keys.

About this release

serial recovery functionality support under Zephyr
simulator: lots of refactors were applied, which result in the simulator now leveraging the Rust testing infrastructure; testing of ecdsa (secp256r1) was added
imgtool: removed PKCS1.5 support, added support for password protected keys
tinycrypt 0.2.8 and the Mbed TLS ASN1 parser are now bundled with MCUboot (eg secp256r1 is now free of external dependencies!)
Overwrite-only mode was updated to erase/copy only sectors that actually store firmware
A lot of small code and documentation fixes and updates.

Known issues

None

Version 1.0.0

The 1.0.0 release of MCUboot introduces a format change. It is important to either use the imgtool.py also from this release, or pass the -2 to recent versions of the newt tool in order to generate image headers with the new format. There should be no incompatible format changes throughout the 1.x.y release series.

About this release

Header format change. This change was made to move all of the information about signatures out of the header and into the TLV block appended to the image. This allows
- The signature to be replaced without changing the image.
- Multiple signatures to be applied. This can be used, for example, to sign an image with two algorithms, to support different bootloader configurations based on these image.
- The public key is referred to by its SHA1 hash (or a prefix of the hash), instead of an index that has to be maintained with the bootloader.
- Allow new types of signatures in the future.
Support for PKCS#1 v1.5 signatures has been dropped. All RSA signatures should be made with PSS. The tools have been changed to reflect this.
The source for Tinycrypt has been placed in the MCUboot tree. A recent version of Tinycrypt introduced breaking API changes. To allow MCUboot to work across various platforms, we stop using the Tinycrypt bundled with the OS platform, and use our own version. A future release of MCUboot will update the Tinycrypt version.
Support for some new targets:
- Nordic nRF51 and nRF52832 dev kits
- Hexiwear K64
Clearer sample applications have been added under samples.
Test plans for zephyr, and mynewt.
The simulator is now able to test RSA signatures.
There is an unimplemented load_addr header for future support for RAM loading in the bootloader.
Numerous documentation.

Known issues

None

Version 0.9.0

This is the first release of MCUboot, a secure bootloader for 32-bit MCUs. It is designed to be operating system-agnostic and works over any transport - wired or wireless. It is also hardware independent, and relies on hardware porting layers from the operating system it works with. For the first release, we have support for three open source operating systems: Apache Mynewt, Zephyr and RIOT.

About this release

This release supports building with and running Apache Mynewt and Zephyr targets.
RIOT is supported as a running target.
Image integrity is provided with SHA256.
Image originator authenticity is provided supporting the following signature algorithms:
- RSA 2048 and RSA PKCS#1 v1.5 or v2.1
- Elliptic curve DSA with secp224r1 and secp256r1
Two firmware upgrade algorithms are provided:
- An overwrite only which upgrades slot 0 with the image in slot 1.
- A swapping upgrade which enables image test, allowing for rollback to a previous known good image.
Supports both Mbed TLS and tinycrypt as backend crypto libraries. One of them must be defined and the chosen signing algorithm will require a particular library according to this list:
- RSA 2048 needs Mbed TLS
- ECDSA secp224r1 needs Mbed TLS
- ECDSA secp256r1 needs tinycrypt as well as the ASN.1 code from Mbed TLS (so still needs that present).

Known issues

The image header and TLV formats are planned to change with release 1.0: https://runtimeco.atlassian.net/browse/MCUB-66