Cryptographically Scrubbable Storage Device Key Erasure
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional methods for deleting data from storage volumes are time-consuming, leave detectable traces, and render storage media unusable, posing challenges in tactical and security contexts where data obliteration is necessary without physical destruction.
Innovation Solution
A scrub controller generates and manages a scrub key to encrypt and decrypt data on a storage volume, allowing for rapid obliteration of data by overwriting the scrub key, with an indicator number providing additional verification and assurance, ensuring data remains inaccessible and unrecoverable.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If conventional physical erasure methods (overwriting entire media surface, grinding, or thermite detonation) are used to scrub storage volume, then data obliteration is achieved, but the process is time-consuming and leaves detectable traces
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the essential element needed for data recovery (the cryptographic key) from the storage system and destroys it separately. By destroying only the key rather than the entire storage media, the system achieves rapid data obliteration without time-consuming physical erasure of the storage volume itself.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent replaces mechanical/physical erasure methods (overwriting media surfaces, grinding, thermite detonation) with a cryptographic approach. Instead of physically destroying or overwriting storage media, the system uses cryptographic key destruction to render data unrecoverable, substituting a logical/cryptographic mechanism for mechanical destruction.
2Reliability
If conventional physical destruction methods are used to scrub storage volume, then data obliteration is achieved, but the physical storage medium becomes unusable
Solution Approach 1:
The patent separates the data protection mechanism (cryptographic key) from the storage media itself. By destroying only the extracted key element and not the storage media, the system enables data obliteration while preserving the physical medium for future reuse.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent discards only the cryptographic key (the essential security element) while recovering and preserving the storage media for future use. This selective discarding approach allows the storage medium to be reused after data obliteration.
Data Source
AI summary
A cryptographically scrubbable disk performs erasure of a cryptographic key covering a body of data to render the body of data unintelligible. A scrub controller interfaced between a computing appliance and a storage volume generates a scrub key and encrypts each block of data written to the storage volume using the scrub key. Data read commands decrypt using the same key. The scrub controller is an electronically separate conduit having independent memory and power, thus the scrub key remains within the scrub controller and unexposed, and is thus inaccessible via the processor of the computing appliance. The scrub key remains in the scrub controller such that the scrub key never leaves the scrub controller and is also inaccessible to retrieval since the scrub controller does not share memory or access with the computer and is thus electronically separate from the supported computing appliance.