Trusted execution environments are widely deployed to protect cryptographic material and sensitive algorithms in safety-critical embedded systems. The Texas Instruments OMAP-L138 illustrates how design assumptions around obscurity, ROM-based trust anchors and cache behavior can undermine these protections over time. By combining reverse engineering of an undocumented DSP architecture with side-channel analysis against cryptographic module loading, it became possible to extract long-term manufacturer keys and bypass integrity guarantees. The findings underscore the operational risks of relying on closed designs without recovery paths and highlight the need for update strategies, transparency and resilience in secure embedded platforms.

In this insightful session, Wouter Bokslag, co-founding partner and security researcher, and Carlo Meijer, founding partner, Midnight Blue, discuss:

• Limitations of obscurity-based protections in embedded trust architectures;
• Cache timing side channels against cryptographic loaders;
• Design lessons for long-lived, safety-critical systems.