Trust Anchor ASIC Identity Verification via Posture Assessment
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing technologies face challenges in securely binding hardware components, such as ASICs, to trust anchors, particularly in preventing gray market modifications and counterfeiting, while avoiding increased costs and capacity usage.
Innovation Solution
A system that performs a posture assessment at a trust anchor to determine if a hardware component is authorized to run on a product. This involves generating a random value, encrypting it using the hardware component's long-term key, communicating it to the component, and verifying the component's authorization based on its response encrypted with the same value.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a trust anchor is added to every ASIC to verify identity, then security against gray market modifications is improved, but device complexity and cost increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a trust anchor as an intermediary component that resides in the network device (switch/router) rather than within each ASIC. This mediator performs the cryptographic verification operations, allowing ASICs to authenticate themselves without embedding complex trust anchor functionality in each chip. The trust anchor acts as a centralized security service that simplifies the overall system architecture while maintaining strong security.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent extracts the trust anchor functionality from individual ASICs and consolidates it into a separate, centralized component in the network device. By removing the trust anchor from each ASIC, the system eliminates the complexity of distributing and managing trust anchors across multiple chips while maintaining the security verification capability through a centralized approach.
2Reliability
If a trust anchor is added to every ASIC to verify identity, then security against counterfeiting is improved, but manufacturing cost increases
Solution Approach 1:
The trust anchor serves as a mediator that performs expensive cryptographic operations centrally rather than requiring each ASIC to contain its own trust anchor. This approach reduces the per-ASIC manufacturing cost by eliminating the need to fabricate and program trust anchor components into each chip, while the centralized trust anchor bears the computational cost of verification.
Solution Approach 2:
By extracting the trust anchor functionality from individual ASICs, the patent reduces the bill of materials and manufacturing complexity for each chip. The trust anchor is implemented as a separate module in the network device, allowing ASICs to be manufactured as simpler, cheaper components that only need basic authentication capability.
3Reliability
If cryptographic operations are performed in ASIC to verify authorization, then authorization verification is improved, but capacity of the ASIC is reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The trust anchor acts as an intermediary that offloads cryptographic operations from the ASIC. Instead of the ASIC performing complex encryption and verification operations internally, the trust anchor performs these operations externally using the ASIC's long-term key. This allows the ASIC to maintain its full computational capacity for network processing while still achieving secure authorization verification.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent extracts heavy cryptographic processing operations from the ASIC and places them in the trust anchor. The ASIC only retains the lightweight function of providing its long-term key and responding to authentication challenges, thereby preserving its capacity for primary network functions while maintaining security through external cryptographic verification.
Data Source
AI summary
According to certain embodiments, a method comprises performing a posture assessment at a trust anchor in order to determine whether a hardware component is authorized to run on a product. Performing the posture assessment comprises determining a random value (K), encrypting the random value (K) using a long-term key associated with the hardware component in order to yield an encrypted value, communicating the encrypted value to the hardware component, and receiving, from the hardware component, a message encrypted using the random value (K). The message comprises an identifier associated with the hardware component. Performing the posture assessment further comprises determining whether the hardware component is authorized to run on the product based at least in part on the identifier associated with the hardware component. The method further comprises performing an action that depends on whether the hardware component is authorized to run on the product.