Freescale Enhances MQX Security

Through this offering, embedded developers will have access to fully supported commercial cryptography solutions with instant online access to source-code versions of the NanoSSL and NanoSSH client software products. Integrated into Freescale’s Processor Expert configuration tool, NanoSSL and NanoSSH allow easy implementation and customisation through embedded components and do not require crypto expertise on the part of the developer.

NanoSSL and NanoSSH software is specially optimised to secure connections to and from MQX enabled devices in an efficient way to minimally impact the performance and flash/ROM use of Freescale processors. The Mocana security client is ultra-small, at less than one-fifth the size of a typical SSL/SSH client. In addition, the software uses FIPS 140-2 level 1 validated cryptographic algorithms and fully FIPS validated binaries of the software are available for many platforms as an upgrade from Mocana.

Most customers will be able to build the security features they need with the bundled versions of the NanoSSL and NanoSSH clients. But more advanced Freescale MQX customers can also purchase upgrades directly from Mocana to access a variety of professional cryptographic features, including government certified FIPS 140-2 level 1 binaries, NSA “Suite B” and elliptic curve cryptography, TLS 1.2 support, sophisticated X.509 certificate management and massively-scalable server versions of NanoSSL and NanoSSH suitable for high-traffic carrier environments.

“Our customers have been asking for professional cryptographic solutions built for the special needs of embedded environments,” said Aiden Mitchell, director of the Industrial and Multi-market microcontrollers at Freescale. “Mocana is a leader in this field and we’re excited to make their security software available to our community of MQX designers, and to the millions of installed devices that use MQX RTOS.”

“Freescale understands the importance of security in device environments,” said Mocana VP Products Mike Siegel. “Smart Devices already outnumber PCs on the Internet by at least 5 to 1, and the ratio is growing incredibly fast. Security for the new connected majority - smart devices - needs to be built-in from the beginning, and with this offering, Freescale is making professionally supported cryptographic software available to everyone.”

MQX software: full-featured, proven and scalable
The Freescale MQX real time operating system (RTOS) offers leading edge software technology for embedded designs based on Freescale processors and microcontrollers. Unlike general-purpose operating systems designed for desktop systems, the Freescale MQX RTOS was designed for speed and size efficiency in embedded systems. Freescale MQX software offers powerful, pre-emptive real-time performance with optimised context switch and interrupt times, enabling fast, highly predictable response times. Its small, configurable size conserves memory space for embedded applications, and it can be configured to take as little as 6 KB of ROM, including kernel, interrupts, semaphores, queues and memory manager.