Due to a global shortage of ATECC608A and ATECC608B parts, I am not sure when or if I'll be able to make a new manufacturing run of NervesKeys.

What is it?

NervesKey is an ATECC608A cryptographic chip breakout board that allows you to store SSL private keys securely. It was created for use with the NervesHub firmware update server but also can work with services like AWS IoT, Azure IoT, and more.

NervesKey is very thin and mounts unobtrusively to the bottom of any Raspberry Pi. If you're not using a Raspberry Pi, solder in .1" headers and breadboard it or connect it to the I2C bus of your board. The pictures above show mounting options. Note that NervesKey does not include a Raspberry Pi, breadboard and other components. Those are shown for reference only.

The ATECC608A on NervesKey comes unprogrammed and needs initializaton. Documentation for configuring NervesKey for use with NervesHub will be found at under the link below. Questions and support can be found on the ElixirLang slack channel. If you're not using NervesHub, the ATECC608A can be configured how ever you see fit making this board perfect for experimentation.

Why did you make it?

We wanted to protect SSL private keys on devices running Nerves, but making existing options work either required a decent amount of work or cost enough many users would find ways to justify storing them in the clear. The ATECC608A seemed perfect, but it was just a chip and didn't easily attach to a Raspberry Pi. Now that we have open-source software available for the ATECC508A and ATECC608 [1], [2], and [3] for use with Elixir and Nerves, we'd really like everyone using NervesHub to have no reason to store private keys in the clear.

What makes it special?

We put an ATECC608A on a small board so that it's possible to solder to a Raspberry Pi. That's it. We hope that it will save you some time and improve the security of your devices.