Linux fingerprint sensor daemon for QTEE devices
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  • Shell 11.4%
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Jorijn van der Graaf 1db0762078 Port the RPMB listener's wire format, guard included
Fingerprintd:Rpmb is the other half of QTEE's storage. Where gpfile moves the
container bytes, RPMB is the anti-rollback: an authenticated, monotonically
counted area of the UFS device that lets QTEE tell a genuine store from an old
one replayed back at it. Framing and policy only; the SCSI transport stays in
the daemon shell.

The guard is the reason this module has tests rather than just constants.
req_resp 0x0001 is Authentication Key Programming, and the RPMB key is one-time
programmable in the UFS device -- relaying such a frame destroys that part's
RPMB permanently and no reflash recovers it. QTEE has no legitimate reason to
send one, so it is refused unconditionally, whatever the write policy says. It
is tested for scanning every frame rather than the first, and for refusing a
request that claims more frames than the buffer holds instead of reading past
the end.

The out-parameter at +0x08 is the field that failed every RPMB transaction for
a week. librpmb passes it by address, so it reports bytes transferred, and QTEE
compares it against what it expected and rejects the transaction on a mismatch.
A read posts one request frame however large nblocks is while a write posts
nblocks * 512, so the two directions genuinely do not report the same thing --
tested as such, because leaving the request's frame size there is the bug.

+0x0c is kept exactly as the request supplied it. QTEE looks for the response
frames at req + req[0x0c] and the request arrives with 0x18; librpmb's
hardcoded 20 points four bytes early.

Chunking refuses a remainder rather than following the reference, which
silently drops one -- a partial authenticated write leaves the store
inconsistent with a counter that cannot be moved back.

Verified by mutation: checking only the first frame for key programming,
reporting a flat frame size as bytes transferred, and admitting a remainder
each fail the suite.
2026-09-02 16:48:57 +02:00
implementations Initial commit: the gpfile wire format, pinned by two real containers 2026-09-02 16:02:46 +02:00
interfaces Port the RPMB listener's wire format, guard included 2026-09-02 16:48:57 +02:00
tests Port the RPMB listener's wire format, guard included 2026-09-02 16:48:57 +02:00
.gitignore Initial commit: the gpfile wire format, pinned by two real containers 2026-09-02 16:02:46 +02:00
LICENSE Initial commit: the gpfile wire format, pinned by two real containers 2026-09-02 16:02:46 +02:00
lint-rules.h Initial commit: the gpfile wire format, pinned by two real containers 2026-09-02 16:02:46 +02:00
project.cpp Port the RPMB listener's wire format, guard included 2026-09-02 16:48:57 +02:00
README.md Initial commit: the gpfile wire format, pinned by two real containers 2026-09-02 16:02:46 +02:00

fingerprintd

Fingerprint daemon for the Fairphone 6 (milos, SM7635) on mainline Linux.

Why a daemon

The sensor is a FocalTech FT9391 on a TrustZone-owned SPI bus. spi@a88000 is disabled in both the mainline and the stock Android device tree, and the pads are XPU-protected — touching them from the normal world is an instant SError reboot. Every pixel the sensor produces stays inside the TEE: capture, preprocessing, the classifier, enrolment and matching all run in the focal64 trustlet, which reports a matched finger id and nothing else. A libfprint-style driver cannot exist on this device.

So the normal world's job is narrower than usual, and none of it is per-request work:

  • Power the sensor. Rail on gpio29, reset on gpio74, interrupt on gpio75 — the same division of labour the downstream driver uses. One sensor reset buys exactly one trustlet init, so whatever powers the sensor must also hold the session open.
  • Be QTEE's filesystem. QTEE cannot reach storage. When the trustlet saves or loads a template it calls back into the normal world through the gpfile (0x7000) and RPMB (0x2000) listeners, and expects them served. QTEE does the crypto and the anti-rollback; this side moves opaque bytes and performs the authenticated RPMB transactions against the UFS device.
  • Speak a biometrics API. The daemon owns net.reactivated.Fprint, so pam_fprintd, the Plasma fingerprint KCM and fprintd-enroll(1) work against it unmodified.

A listener registration is held for as long as the process lives and QTEE's listener table is global to the boot, so this has to be one long-lived process rather than a tool spawned per request.

Layout

interfaces/     Fingerprintd{,-Sfs}.cppm   the core: pure C++ modules
implementations/main.cpp                   the daemon shell
tests/                                     one suite per core module

fingerprintd-core is a static library with no GLib, no libqcomtee and no system headers. Everything in it is a wire format or a state machine that was recovered by reverse-engineering, so all of it is pinned by tests that run on a dev box with no phone, no TEE and no sensor. The daemon shell holds everything that touches hardware.

Build

crafter-build              # bin/fingerprintd-<target>-<march>/fingerprintd
crafter-build test         # the unit suites

Cross-compiling for the phone:

crafter-build -- --target=aarch64-alpine-linux-musl \
  --sysroot=<alpine-aarch64-sysroot> --march=armv8-a --mtune=generic
crafter-build test --target=aarch64-alpine-linux-musl

Status

Early. The core is being ported one wire format at a time out of the research harness that first made the sensor work (utilities/fpta.c in the fp6 repo), each piece landing with tests before the next starts. Fingerprintd:Sfs — the gpfile frame — is done. The daemon itself does not run yet.

The working reference enrols a finger, keeps it across a reboot, and matches it with zero false accepts; the port exists to turn that into a service rather than to rediscover it.

Runtime dependencies, not carried here

The focal64 trustlet is proprietary and is not in this repo. It is extracted from the device's own stock Android partition on first boot by the fp6-vendor-blobs mechanism, the same way the audio firmware is.