IoT Smart Home Secured with TEE Wins First GlobalPlatform Hackathon
October 31 – SafeHaven, a system that enables granular control of every IoT device in a smart home has won the inaugural GlobalPlatform Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) hackathon. Without prior experience of using the technology, developers Subhash Gutti and Harish Gowda, created a functioning gateway system during the hackathon which remotely, instantly and securely denies or grants access to IoT devices using the TEE.
Alongside sponsors Samsung and Sequitur Labs, GlobalPlatform – a cross-industry body that defines and develops specifications for secure chip technology – challenged programmers, idea generators and designers to create trusted applications that make use of the latest TEE security technology.
"In the age of mobile and IoT devices, the importance of secure operations and transactions of applications, backed by hardware security, is acknowledged and valued more than ever," said Henry Lee, vice president of security R&D for Samsung Mobile, "I believe that Hackathons will continue to act as a catalyst for recognizing the importance of trusted applications, TEE and hardware-backed security."
Abhijeet Rane, Vice President of Marketing from Sequitur Labs, which provided the development platform in the form of a Raspberry Pi and its TEE virtual environment, commented: “The TEE is poised to become the standard for ensuring device integrity, data confidentiality and authenticity for IoT devices. It is imperative for developers to understand this technology and learn to develop applications that utilize it. The TEE hackathon event provided the opportunity to engage with and train developers, and a forum for developers to learn about TEE use cases.”
Hackathon participants were invited to compete for cash prizes and the chance to present their trusted applications to TEE experts at the GlobalPlatform TEE Conference. Gil Bernabeu, Technical Director for GlobalPlatform, added: “Our objective in setting up this hackathon was to allow developers to implement ideas on TEE and the result has been outstanding; developers were able to quickly develop impressive secure application prototypes.” Mentor and judge Lubna Dajani, chief strategy officer and futurist for Intercede, agreed and added “Although the overwhelming majority of the participants did not have prior knowledge of the technology, by the end of the hackathon they had managed to build innovative applications in the TEE. Participants left saying they will use TEE in their professions in the future.”
The winning solution SafeHaven, a secure multi-user solution for IoT devices, impressed judges as it had two trusted applications (one securing the user credentials and one controlling user access in a TEE) as well as two mobile applications (one performing administration and one performing user functionality).
Rolling IDs, a start-up focusing on producing small wearable asset trackers, was named runner up, as it successfully demonstrated how TEE technology can host an algorithm that ensures privacy-by-design tracking mechanism. The second runner up, TuffPass, was a TEE-based consumer object which was designed to create, store and retrieve strong passwords.
GlobalPlatform would like to extend its thanks to the mentors and judges that participated in the hackathon: Mike Hendrick, VP of Product Development, Sequitur Labs; Heekwan Lee, Principle Security Engineer, Samsung; Isaac de la Pena, Chief Technology Officer, Agora EAFI; Rob Dyke, FAE Manager, Trustonic; Nicolas Lavabre, Senior Consultant, Smart Consulting; and Lubna Dajani, Futurist and Chief Strategic Officer, Intercede.
Visit GlobalPlatform’s website for an introduction to their specifications or for more information on the TEE.
