Redundant Encryption for Memory Data Integrity
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing data encryption methods for digital electronic systems fail to effectively protect against unauthorized access and data corruption, as they do not adequately authenticate encrypted data stored in memory, leading to potential tampering and modification issues.
Innovation Solution
The implementation of redundant encryption using two unique encryption keys for data stored in memory, where one key generates cipher text and the other generates an authentication tag, allowing for authentication by comparing decrypted plaintext from both, ensuring data integrity and detecting any alterations.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If traditional single-key encryption is used, then device complexity is reduced, but data security and authentication capability deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The encryption system is segmented into two distinct functional components: a first encryption key for data encryption and a second encryption key for generating authentication tags. This segmentation allows each key to have a specialized function, improving overall security while keeping individual key management relatively simple.
Solution Approach 2:
The authentication tag is generated in advance during the encryption process, before data storage or retrieval. This preliminary action ensures that authentication capability is built into the encrypted data structure itself, eliminating the need for complex post-retrieval authentication mechanisms.
2Reliability
If hash-based authentication methods are used, then data integrity can be verified, but memory efficiency and performance deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The system changes the parameter of authentication data generation by using encryption-based authentication tag generation instead of traditional hash functions. This parameter change maintains data integrity verification while improving memory efficiency and overall system performance.
Data Source
AI summary
Contents of a memory may be authenticated using redundant encryption. In some examples, data to be stored by a memory is encrypted with two unique encryption keys—a first encryption key is used generate a cipher text and a second encryption key (different than the first encryption key) is used to generate an authentication tag. The cipher text and authentication tag are stored by the memory. At a later time, the cipher text and authentication tag may be retrieved from the memory and decrypted using the respective encryption keys. After decrypting the cipher text and the authentication tag, the data retrieved from the memory may be authenticated by comparing the plaintext generated by decrypting the cipher text and with the plaintext generated by decrypting the authentication tag. A match between the plaintext indicates the data was not corrupted or modified during storage in the memory.