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Customer Case Study

How Worldcoin uses Teleport to manage a fleet of IoT connected Orbs

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Worldcoin is a new cryptocurrency developed by a group of entrepreneurs in the United States. The coin is designed to be a Privacy-Preserving Proof-of-Personhood Protocol. A foundation is required to provide and deliver the concept of Universal Basic Income.

How Teleport solved Worldcoin challenges

The team behind Worldcoin was made up of a variety of professionals, including software developers, financial advisors, and legal experts. The goal of the project was to rapidly get its new currency into the hands of as many people as possible; Worldcoin will allow everyone to claim a share of it for free. For this to happen, Worldcoin first had to solve one major challenge: ensuring that every person on Earth can prove that they are indeed human (not a bot), and that they have yet to claim their free share of Worldcoin.

Worldcoin Orb
How do we control access to devices in a variety of environments and conditions? Well, that's pretty easy, right? We can just set up and reverse SSH tunnel with Teleport. But a bigger question is: how do we monitor these devices in places like a factory?

In order to launch the Orb, they require volunteers to scan people's irises with the 'orb', a hardware device that records the user's retina. Worldcoin is a globally distributed biometric processor that has been deployed around the world. Ethan Wright, the device security lead, was tasked with managing the devices' security in various environments and conditions. To do this, Worldcoin decided to use Teleport as a fleet management tool.

  • First, Teleport was used to monitor devices in the field, tracking various characteristics such as the IP, geolocation, software versions, security and environmental characteristics. This was done to ensure the device's integrity and to detect any malicious activity.
    Worldcoin in Teleport
  • Second, Teleport enabled non-software engineers to interact with the device safely. This was done to ensure the device was properly tested and configured before being sent out.

  • Third, Teleport was used as an emergency backup to the OTA process. This allowed Worldcoin to create a temporary file system in memory on the target, copy all the cleanup scripts, and perform necessary maintenance operations.
But in this case, Teleport can really facilitate many of the actions that you need for basic fleet management. And it can cover a lot of the holes that are left in OTA because OTA is a really complicated beast and it's very hard to do correctly, but the cost of doing it incorrectly is quite high. And so by leveraging Teleport and OTA in this way, you can cover a lot of the potential loopholes or pitfalls that one might have while designing these.
  • Fourth, Teleport was used to upgrade certificates that were expiring soon on the microcontrollers and other peripherals on the device. This allowed Worldcoin to rotate keys and certificates without having to anticipate when the devices would be connected.

  • Fifth, Teleport was used during the manufacturing stage. This allowed Worldcoin to add Orbs to a separate cluster, give their QA access to the cluster and exfil the results of the end-of-line testing.

  • Finally, Teleport was used to change the sounds that the Orb was making in the field. This allowed Worldcoin to deploy the sound files in real-time and get immediate feedback from users.

Overall, Teleport proved to be an invaluable tool for Worldcoin, allowing them to monitor, test and maintain their devices in various environments and conditions.

Worldcoin's use of Teleport is unique for many reasons and highlights the flexibility of running Teleport on a small ARM-based processor and its ability to easily dial-home to Worldcoin HQ using a range of different network conditions.

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Secretless Server Access

Prevent phishing attacks, meet compliance requirements, maintain a live catalog of all trusted devices, and have complete visibility into live and past sessions.

Geo

New York / Erlangen / Berlin / San Francisco

Vertical

Crypto

Employees

152

Clouds

IoT Devices

  • Challenges
  • Monitor Worldcoin devices to meet company requirements
  • Enable a team to access remote ARM devices with limited internet connectivity
  • Perform Over the Air (OTA) updates to the Orb
  • Let Q&A interact and test the org prior to shipping
  • Results
  • Leveraged Dynamic Labs to monitor deployed devices, both systems attributes, and network stats.
  • Created an Orb field updater to interface to orbs using dynamic labs and orbs to update and perform maintenance as session recording
  • Found Teleport to be a good remote tool to rescue remote devices
  • Leveraged Teleport SCP to upload audio files to the Orb during lower periods of usage