Hardware Secure Isolated Region for Anti-Piracy
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current anti-piracy measures for electronic devices are ineffective as malicious users can modify the operating system, hypervisor, and firmware to extract and execute application code, compromising the security and integrity of applications.
Innovation Solution
Implementing secure isolated technology that utilizes hardware-based secure regions, such as Intel's Software Guard Extensions (SGX), to store critical application code encrypted, which can only be decrypted and executed within a secure environment, preventing unauthorized access and manipulation.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If conventional anti-piracy measures (software techniques) are used, then implementation complexity is low, but security effectiveness deteriorates as malicious users can modify OS, hypervisor, and firmware to extract code
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides the application code into multiple segments: encrypted code stored in secure isolated hardware region and plaintext code stored in regular memory. This segmentation allows critical code to be protected while maintaining overall system functionality, resolving the contradiction by implementing hardware-based security without requiring complete system redesign.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an intermediary decryption mechanism that operates within the secure isolated hardware region. This intermediary component decrypts code segments on-demand and facilitates secure communication between the protected region and the rest of the system, enabling enhanced security without direct exposure of critical code to the untrusted environment.
2Reliability
If code is stored in plaintext for easy execution, then execution speed is high, but code security deteriorates allowing extraction and manipulation by malicious users
Solution Approach 1:
The patent performs preliminary decryption of code segments within the secure isolated hardware region before execution. By pre-processing the decryption operation in a protected environment and caching decrypted segments temporarily, the system maintains high execution speed while ensuring code security, as the time-consuming decryption occurs beforehand rather than during runtime execution.
3Reliability
If critical code is encrypted to prevent extraction, then code security is improved, but device complexity increases due to decryption requirements
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies encryption selectively only to critical code segments that require protection, rather than encrypting the entire application. This local approach to encryption minimizes the complexity of decryption mechanisms while maintaining code security for the most sensitive portions, resolving the contradiction by focusing security resources where they are most needed.
Data Source
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AI summary
System and methods for using secure isolated technology to prevent piracy and cheating on electronic devices. In some examples, an electronic device can use hardware based secure isolated technology to store a first portion of an application in computer memory, and store a second portion of the application in a hardware based secure isolated region of the computer memory, the second portion of the application including an encrypted portion and a plaintext portion The electronic device can further use the hardware based secure isolated technology to establish a secure encrypted communication channel with a server, send data to the server via the secure encrypted communication channel, receive a decryption key from the server via the secure encrypted communication channel, and decrypt encrypted portion using the decryption key. The electronic device can then execute the application using the first portion of the application and the second portion of the application.