The embodiments described herein describe technologies for Module management, including Module creation and Module deployment to a target device in an operation phase of a manufacturing lifecycle of the target device in a cryptographic manager (CM) environment. One implementation includes a Root Authority (RA) device that receives a first command to create a Module and executes a Module Template to generate the Module in response to the first command. The RA device receives a second command to create a deployment authorization message. The Module and the deployment authorization message are deployed to an Appliance device. A set of instructions of the Module, when permitted by the deployment authorization message and executed by the Appliance device, results in a secure construction of a sequence of operations to securely provision a data asset to the target device.

Lessons learned from Meltdown's exploitation of the weaknesses in today's processors.

Modern processors use branch prediction and speculative execution to maximize performance. For example, if the destination of a branch depends on a memory value that is in the process of being read, CPUs will try to guess the destination and attempt to execute ahead. When the memory value finally arrives, the CPU either discards or commits the speculative computation. Speculative logic is unfaithful in how it executes, can access the victim's memory and registers, and can perform operations with measurable side effects. Spectre attacks involve inducing a victim to speculatively perform operations that would not occur during correct program execution and which leak the victim's confidential information via a side channel to the adversary. This paper describes practical attacks that combine methodology from side channel attacks, fault attacks, and return-oriented programming that can read arbitrary memory from the victim's process. More broadly, the paper shows that speculative execution implementations violate the security assumptions underpinning numerous software security mechanisms, including operating system process separation, containerization, just-in-time (JIT) compilation, and countermeasures to cache timing and side-channel attacks. These attacks represent a serious threat to actual systems since vulnerable speculative execution capabilities are found in microprocessors from Intel, AMD, and ARM that are used in billions of devices. While makeshift processor-specific countermeasures are possible in some cases, sound solutions will require fixes to processor designs as well as updates to instruction set architectures (ISAs) to give hardware architects and software developers a common understanding as to what computation state CPU implementations are (and are not) permitted to leak.

Methods and devices to encrypt and decrypt sensitive data to in a manner that provides secunty from external monitoring attacks is disclosed The encrypting device has access to a base secret cryptographic value (key) that is also known to the decrypting device The sensitive data are decomposed into segments, and each segment is encrypted with a separate encryption key denved from the base key and a message identifier to create a set of encrypted segments The encrypting device uses the base cryptographic value to create validators that prove that the encrypted segments for this message identifier were created by a device with access to the base key The decrypting device, upon receiving an encrypted segments uses validators to verify the message identifier and that the encrypted segment are unmodified.

The security of computer systems fundamentally relies on memory isolation, e.g., kernel address ranges are marked as non-accessible and are protected from user access. In this paper, we present Meltdown. Meltdown exploits side effects of out-of-order execution on modern processors to read arbitrary kernel-memory locations including personal data and passwords. Out-of-order execution is an indispensable performance feature and present in a wide range of modern processors. The attack is independent of the operating system, and it does not rely on any software vulnerabilities. Meltdown breaks all security guarantees provided by address space isolation as well as paravirtualized environments and, thus, every security mechanism building upon this foundation. On affected systems, Meltdown enables an adversary to read memory of other processes or virtual machines in the cloud without any permissions or privileges, affecting millions of customers and virtually every user of a personal computer. We show that the KAISER defense mechanism for KASLR has the important (but inadvertent) side effect of impeding Meltdown. We stress that KAISER must be deployed immediately to prevent large-scale exploitation of this severe information leakage.

Methods and apparatus for generating, publishing, and using cryptographic keys that enable access to encrypted content any time after, and not before, a defined future release time, without depending on publication of a key or other information at or after the release time. The methods and apparatus make use of various cryptographic features, including but not limited to a time key selected by a key issuer from a predetermined key sequence based on a publication time for data including a time key or set of time keys and a timestamp, an intermediate key derived by a player device from the time key using an iterative cryptographic transformation based on comparing the release time to the publication time, and optionally including derivation of a shadow key.

Computer security problems have far exceeded the limits of the human brain. What can we do about it?

La presente invention porte sur un mecanisme qui permet de fournir une fonctionnalite securisee et une gestion de cle dans des circuits integres. Un circuit integre illustratif comprend une memoire securisee pour stocker une cle secrete, et un cœur de gestionnaire de securite, couple a la memoire securisee, pour recevoir une commande numeriquement signee, pour verifier la signature associee a la commande a l'aide de la cle secrete et pour configurer un fonctionnement du circuit integre a l'aide de la commande.

There is a growing need to secure cryptographic keys and other secrets on SoCs and other large ASICs. For designers, smaller geometries make it more difficult to predict the precise physical and analog properties of digital logic blocks. In addition, high mask costs make it difficult to tune designs and raise the consequences of failure. For example, side channel attacks such as differential cryptanalysis can easily and noninvasively extract secrets from unprotected SoCs. Vulnerabilities can be difficult to anticipate, since common design and verification tools do not necessarily provide clear visibility into how devices will fail when pushed outside of its normal operational conditions. The security challenges facing the semiconductor industry are also in part educational; while security training is common for software developers, relatively few hardware engineers have specialized security knowledge. Some of these challenges can be mitigated at the architectural level, for example by using cryptographic constructions that provide inherent side-channel resistance irrespective of a device's underlying analog properties.