Finding Hardware Flaws with Laura Abbott
Laura Abbott, an engineer at Oxide Computer, discusses her accidental discovery of a buffer overflow vulnerability in the ROM update mechanism of the NXP LPC55S69 microcontroller while working on Oxide's server root of trust. She explains how Oxide is rebuilding the server from the ground up with a focus on hardware security, utilizing their open-source operating system Hubris and the Rust programming language to mitigate risks like memory safety issues. The conversation covers the architecture of the server's secure components, including the service processor and TrustZone-M, as well as the challenges of remote hardware debugging and contributing to the Linux kernel community.