Hierarchical Chain of Trust Future Constraints
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing cryptographic trust mechanisms in electronic devices are either overly centralized, leading to scalability issues when authenticating numerous applications, or overly decentralized, resulting in potential security loopholes, as they struggle to balance security and scalability in a hierarchical chain of trust.
Innovation Solution
A method that allows an authenticating domain in a hierarchical chain of trust to specify future constraints for a target domain, combining these with target domain constraints to generate a combined constraint set, enabling influence over descendant domains while allowing them to introduce their own constraints, thus maintaining security and scalability.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If cryptographic trust mechanisms are centralized to maintain security, then security is improved, but scalability deteriorates when authenticating numerous applications
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides the centralized trust mechanism into a hierarchical structure with multiple domains at different levels. Each domain can independently authenticate commands within its scope, eliminating the single-point bottleneck while maintaining security through cryptographic chains of trust. The root domain, intermediate domains, and leaf domains each operate semi-autonomously, enabling parallel authentication operations that scale with the number of applications.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a hierarchical dimension to the trust model, organizing domains in multiple levels rather than a flat structure. This dimensional organization allows security policies to be applied at different hierarchical levels, enabling both centralized control at the root level and decentralized authentication at lower levels, thus resolving the security-scalability tradeoff.
2Productivity
If cryptographic trust mechanisms are decentralized to improve scalability, then scalability is improved, but security deteriorates due to potential security loopholes
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a nested hierarchical structure where domains contain sub-domains in a tree-like organization. Each domain is nested within its parent domain and contains child domains, creating a nested chain of trust. This nesting ensures that security policies propagate down the hierarchy while allowing each nested level to operate independently, maintaining both scalability and security.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces intermediate domains that act as mediators between the root domain and leaf domains. These intermediate domains enforce security policies and authenticate commands before passing them to lower levels, preventing security loopholes while enabling decentralized operation. The intermediaries ensure that scalability does not compromise security by maintaining cryptographic verification at each hierarchical level.
3Reliability
If higher levels of the chain of trust control all authentication criteria, then security is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts detailed authentication criteria from the root domain and delegates them to appropriate intermediate and leaf domains. This extraction reduces the complexity at higher levels by removing the burden of managing all authentication details centrally, while still maintaining security through the hierarchical cryptographic trust relationships. Each domain manages only the criteria relevant to its level.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent establishes security policies and cryptographic credentials in advance during domain configuration, before actual command authentication occurs. This preliminary action allows higher levels to set security parameters once during domain creation, after which lower levels can operate autonomously within those parameters, reducing ongoing complexity at higher levels while maintaining security.
Data Source
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AI summary
A method of configuring a target domain 50-T providing a cryptographic identity for authenticating commands to be executed by an electronic device 2 comprises receiving a domain configuration command 60, and authenticating the command 60 based on a cryptographic identity provided by an authenticating domain 50-A which is an ancestor of the target domain 50-T in a hierarchical chain of trust. When authenticated, at least one target domain constraint 72 specified by the command 60 is combined with at least one future constraint 82-A specified by the authenticating domain 50-A to generate a combined constraint set 80-T to be satisfied by commands to be authenticated by the target domain. The combined constraint set 80-T is stored for the target domain 50-T. This approach provides a balance between security and scalability of the chain of trust.