TEEPwn: Breaking TEEs by Experience [HITB+ CYBERWEEK 2021]

The TEEPwn experience takes an offensive perspective and dives into the darker corners of TEE security. It’s designed with a system-level approach, where you will experience exploitation of powerful vulnerabilities specific for TEE technology. Moreover, it’s hands-on, well-guided and driven by an exciting jeopardy-style game format.

Your journey starts with achieving a comprehensive understanding of TEE technology. You will learn how hardware and software cooperate in order to enforce effective security boundaries. You will then use this understanding for identifying interesting vulnerabilities across the entire TEE attack surface. You will be challenged to exploit these vulnerabilities using multiple realistic scenarios. All practical exercises are performed on our emulated attack platform which is using ARM TrustZone to implement multiple TEE implementations.

You will take on different roles, as an attacker in control of:

• the REE, achieving privileged code execution inside the TEE
• the REE, accessing assets protected by a Trusted Application (TA)
• a TA, escalating privileges to the TEE OS
• a TA, accessing the protected assets of another TA

You will be guided towards an unexpected range of TEE-specific attack vectors and vulnerabilities, which can be leveraged for novel and creative exploits, allowing you to refine your skills to a new level.

Do not worry if your reverse engineering or exploiting skills are rusty or non-existing. You do not need to be an software security expert nor do we aim to make you one. Nevertheless, many exercises can be completed in complex way which keeps the exercises interesting to experienced attendees as well.

Deliverables

During the training we will provide you with the following:

• cloud-based virtual machine with all the required tooling installed
• access to the exercise modules and instructions
• walk through videos for the hands-on exercises

We will also provide you the following in order to continue with the exercises after the training:

• offline virtual machine with all tooling preinstalled
• ability to copy the exercise modules and instructions
• ability to run the exercise modules forever

Format

This TEEPwn experience will be given in a hybrid format where attendees are able to join in-person and online at the same time. Attendees need to select the desired format before the start of the training.

• Option1: The in-person format requires attendees to join us on-site in Abu Dhabi for 3 days full of lectures and practical exercises. The lectures and support are provided in-person using a classroom setting.
• Option 2: The online format requires attendees to join us online for 3 days full of lectures and practical exercises. The lectures from the in-person classroom are virtually streamed using Zoom. Support is provided virtually via Discord.

Both formats include an optional 4^th day which may be used by the attendees to complete the left-over exercises. During this day, for both formats, only online support is available via Discord. No in-person presence is available from the trainers nor required by the attendees.