Secure Partition Access via Exception Handling for IoT Data Protection
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Solution Overview
Problem
Low-cost, low-power IoT devices often lack basic security features, making them vulnerable to unauthorized access and data theft during production or secondary development, as manufacturers prioritize cost over security, leading to potential illicit use of sensitive information.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a secure partition with a security access management module that restricts access to sensitive data, using exception handling programs to process and encrypt data accessed by normal privilege users, ensuring controlled access and protecting proprietary information.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If security features are added to protect sensitive data, then data security is improved, but manufacturing cost increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system is divided into a secure partition and a normal partition, with the secure partition containing sensitive data and the normal partition containing application programs. This segmentation allows selective protection of only the critical data portion without securing the entire system, thereby reducing overall security implementation costs while protecting what matters most.
Solution Approach 2:
An exception handling program acts as an intermediary between normal user programs and the secure partition. When a normal user program needs data from the secure partition, it triggers a predetermined exception that invokes the exception handling program, which then retrieves and processes the data before returning it to the user program. This intermediary mechanism enables controlled access without requiring direct access permissions, maintaining security while allowing necessary data retrieval.
2Reliability
If access control mechanisms are implemented, then unauthorized access is prevented, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The exception handling program automatically executes in response to predetermined exceptions triggered by normal user programs. The system self-manages the access control process by automatically invoking the exception handling routine when needed, eliminating the need for complex manual access control configurations or additional control logic in user programs.
Solution Approach 2:
The exception handling program serves multiple functions: it acts as an access control mechanism, a data retrieval service, and a data processing unit. By consolidating these functions into a single program that responds to exception triggers, the system achieves robust access control without proportionally increasing complexity, as the same component handles multiple security-related tasks.
Data Source
AI summary
Performing controlled access to data stored in a secure partition is described herein, including: associating a predetermined exception with an exception handling program in an operating system; restricting a user program to execution by a normal privilege user; and designating a secure partition and restricting the secure partition to be accessible by a highest privilege user; wherein, when executed in user space corresponding to the normal privilege user, the user program generates the predetermined exception, and wherein the predetermined exception triggers execution of the exception handling program in kernel space, and the exception handling program is configured to read data from the secure partition and deliver the data after processing to the user program.