Apple Inc.

Jacques Fortier

Bernard Joseph Semeria

Daniel Andreas Steffen

Jeremy C Andrus

Louis G Gerbarg

Peter Cooper

Robert John McCall

Justin R Unger

Devon S Andrade

James H Grosbach

Ahmed Bougacha

Jerrold Von Hauck

Josh P De Cesare

Wade Benson

Simon P Cooper

Pierre-Olivier J Martel

Thomas P Mensch

Filip J Pizlo

Michael Lawrence Saboff

Yin Zin Mark Lam

Ivan Krstić

Austin G Jennings

Gregory Daniel Hughes

Xeno S Kovah

Julien Oster

Nikolaj Schlej

Ryan P Nielson

P Love Hornquist Astrand

Jason A Harmening

Thomas G Holland

Saam J Barati

Yusuke Suzuki

John J Dong

Robert C Graham

Robert J Mccall

Techniques are disclosed relating to securing computing devices during boot. In various embodiments, a secure circuit of a computing device generates for a public key pair and signs, using a private key of the public key pair, configuration settings for an operating system of the computing device. A bootloader of the computing device receives a certificate for the public key pair from a certificate authority and initiates a boot sequence to load the operating system. The boot sequence includes the bootloader verifying the signed configuration settings using a public key included in the certificate and the public key pair. In some embodiments, the secure circuit cryptographically protects the private key based on a passcode of a user, the passcode being usable by the user to authenticate to the computing device.

Securely signing configuration settings

Embodiments described herein enable the interoperability between processes configured for pointer authentication and processes that are not configured for pointer authentication. Enabling the interoperability between such processes enables essential libraries, such as system libraries, to be compiled with pointer authentication, while enabling those libraries to still be used by processes that have not yet been compiled or configured to use pointer authentication.

Dynamic switching between pointer authentication regimes

In an embodiment, dynamically-generated code may be supported in the system by ensuring that the code either remains executing within a predefined region of memory or exits to one of a set of valid exit addresses. Software embodiments are described in which the dynamically-generated code is scanned prior to permitting execution of the dynamically-generated code to ensure that various criteria are met including exclusion of certain disallowed instructions and control of branch target addresses. Hardware embodiments are described in which the dynamically-generated code is permitted to executed but is monitored to ensure that the execution criteria are met.

Software verification of dynamically generated code

In an embodiment, a computer system comprises a page protection layer. The page protection layer may be the component in the system which manages the page tables for virtual to physical page mappings. Transactions to the page protection layer are used to create/manage mappings created in the page tables. The page protection layer may enforce dynamic security policies in the system (i.e. security policies that may not be enforced using only a static hardware configuration). In an embodiment, the page protection layer may ensure that it is the only component which is able to modify the page tables. The page protection layer may ensure than no component in the system is able to modify a page that is marked executable in any process' address space. The page protection may ensure that any page that is marked executable has code with a verified code signature, in an embodiment.

Page protection layer

Growing community of inventors

San Francisco, CA, United States of America

Jacques Fortier