Per-Device Initialization for Computing Devices
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Solution Overview
Problem
Computing devices are vulnerable during the boot stage, allowing hackers to manipulate boot code and potentially take control, leading to security breaches, intellectual property violations, and product liability issues, as a single successful attack can spread across similar devices.
Innovation Solution
Implementing individualized per device initialization programs, where a common initialization program is modified with unique secrets and encrypted for each device, ensuring that each device has a unique initialization process, making it difficult for vulnerabilities in one device to be exploited across others.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Device complexity
If a common initialization program is used across multiple computing devices, then manufacturing cost and complexity are reduced, but security vulnerability to mass exploitation increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by making each initialization program locally unique through device-specific encryption keys and identifiers. While the base initialization program structure remains common, each device receives a customized version encrypted with its unique key, ensuring that security properties vary locally for each device while maintaining manufacturing efficiency.
Solution Approach 2:
The initialization program is segmented into a common base portion and a device-specific encrypted portion. The common portion contains shared functionality, while the device-specific portion is encrypted with unique keys per device. This segmentation allows manufacturers to efficiently produce common code while adding individualized security layers without increasing overall complexity.
2Ease of operation
If boot code is made accessible for initialization purposes, then device functionality is enabled, but susceptibility to hacker manipulation increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements preliminary action by pre-encrypting the initialization program with device-specific keys before the device is even activated. This encryption is established during manufacturing, creating a security barrier before the boot code becomes accessible during initialization. The device must provide the correct key during boot to decrypt and execute the code, preventing unauthorized manipulation while enabling legitimate initialization.
Solution Approach 2:
The encryption key acts as an intermediary between the stored encrypted initialization program and the executable boot code. During initialization, the key mediates the decryption process, allowing legitimate access to the boot code while blocking unauthorized hackers. This intermediary mechanism enables ease of operation for authorized devices while protecting boot code integrity against manipulation.
Data Source
AI summary
An individualized per device initialization of a computing device is unique relative to the initialization of other computing devices. A common initialization program, common to all computing devices of a particular type such as a game console, may be modified to be unique for each computing device. Modification may comprise the application of at least one individualized per device secret, e.g., key, to at least a portion of the common initialization program such as at least one initialization stage. Initialization is tied to one or more device specific identities. In this way, initialization vulnerabilities discovered on a particular device cannot be exploited en masse on other computing devices because each initialization program stored in each computing device is unique. The device specific nature of the initialization program may be extended to other information input to the computing device in order to prevent unauthorized sharing of information with other computing devices.