Secure Code Image Distribution via Device-Specific Variants
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Despite efforts to enhance security for electronic devices, attackers can still exploit vulnerabilities to access or alter device operations, and these vulnerabilities often apply across multiple devices using the same code, making it difficult to prevent widespread attacks.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a secure image delivery system that diversifies code images by creating multiple variants, each encrypted with unique content encryption keys associated with individual devices, ensuring that only the intended variant can be accessed by the corresponding device, thereby preventing access to other variants.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of manufacture
If the same code image is distributed to multiple electronic devices, then manufacturing and distribution are simplified, but security is compromised because a vulnerability in one device can be exploited across all devices using the same code
Solution Approach 1:
The code image is segmented into multiple variants, each distributed to different electronic devices. This segmentation ensures that a vulnerability in one device's code variant cannot be exploited across all devices, as each device runs a different code variant. The patent divides the unified code image into device-specific segments that maintain functional equivalence but differ in implementation details.
Solution Approach 2:
Each electronic device receives a code image with local variations tailored to that specific device. These local quality differences include device-specific identifiers, customized security parameters, and variant-specific code sections. This allows the system to maintain ease of distribution while introducing security diversity through localized code modifications.
2Object-affected harmful factors
If code variants are created for each electronic device to improve security, then attack resistance increases, but device complexity and manufacturing difficulty increase
Solution Approach 1:
The code image structure is designed with universal components that remain consistent across all devices, such as core functionality modules and standardized interfaces. This universality allows a single code template to serve multiple devices while only requiring minor variant modifications for security diversification, thereby limiting the increase in overall complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
Instead of creating entirely different code images for each device, the patent modifies specific parameters within the code structure, such as device identifiers, encryption keys, and variant tags. This approach generates diverse code variants through parameter variation rather than structural redesign, significantly reducing manufacturing and distribution complexity.
3Reliability
If code images are encrypted with unique keys for each device to prevent attack propagation, then security strength increases, but key management complexity and processing overhead increase
Solution Approach 1:
Encryption keys and security parameters are pre-configured in the code image during the build process, before the device is activated. This preliminary action ensures that devices receive their unique encryption keys as part of the initial code image, eliminating the need for complex runtime key exchange or dynamic key generation, thereby reducing operational complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The encryption keys and security mechanisms are nested within the code image structure itself, with keys embedded in protected sections of the code. This nesting allows the key management system to be self-contained within each device's code image, reducing external key management infrastructure requirements and simplifying deployment.
Data Source
AI summary
Secure code image delivery may include encrypting, using an invariant content encryption key, an invariant portion of a code image for a set of electronic devices to generate an encrypted invariant potion of the code image. A first variant of a variant portion of the code image may be encrypted using a first variant content encryption key to generate a first encrypted variant portion. A second variant of a variant portion of the code image may be encrypted using a second variant content encryption key to generate a second encrypted variant portion. A code image bundle may be generated including the encrypted invariant portion, the first encrypted variant portion, and the second encrypted variant portion.