Apparatus for preventing digital piracy

• US 20080229117A1
• Filed: 03/07/2008
• Published: 09/18/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 03/07/2007
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Board of Regents of the University of Michigan (University of Michigan)
• Original Assignee: Board of Regents of the University of Michigan (University of Michigan)
• Inventors: Shin, Kang G., Yang, Jisoo
• Application Number:
  US12/075,119
• Publication Number:
  US 20080229117A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 713/190
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/123 by using dedicated hardware, e.g. dongles, smart cards, cryptographic processors, global positioning systems [GPS] devices
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/72 in cryptographic circuits

Abstract

A method for preventing digital piracy in a computing environment comprises loading an application into the computing environment, wherein the application is encrypted using a cryptographic key; assigning a virtual address space to the application; loading the cryptographic key for the application into a register which is accessible only by a central processing unit; and storing an index value for the key in the register in a page table entry which corresponds to the virtual address space for the application, thereby linking the virtual address space to the key for the application.

Claims

1. A method for preventing digital piracy in a computing environment, comprising:

loading an application into the computing environment, wherein the application is encrypted using a cryptographic key;

assigning a virtual address space to the application;

loading the cryptographic key for the application into a register which is accessible only by a central processing unit; and

storing an index value for the key in the register in a page table entry which corresponds to the virtual address space for the application, thereby linking the virtual address space to the key for the application.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprises encrypting the application prior to loading the application into the computing environment using a cryptographic key selected by the application vendor.

3. The method of claim 1 further comprises delivering the cryptographic key for the application to the computing environment using public key cryptography.

4. The method of claim 3 further comprises decrypting the cryptographic key for the application using a public key assigned to the central processing unit.

5. The method of claim 1 further comprises decrypting a physical address space associated with the application using the cryptographic key upon receipt of a permissible memory access request.

6. The method of claim 5 wherein decrypting the physical address space is performed by a memory management unit residing in the computing environment.

7. A system architecture for preventing digital piracy in a computing environment, comprising:

a register file accessible to a central processing unit and operable to store cryptographic keys associated with applications residing in the computing environment, each application being encrypted with a corresponding cryptographic key;

a page table having a plurality of page table entries, each page table entry configured to store an index to an entry in the register file;

a memory management unit residing in the computing environment and adapted to receive memory access requests from a given application, the memory management unit operable to retrieve the cryptographic key for the given application from the register file using the corresponding page table entry and decrypt a physical address space associated with the memory access request using the retrieved key.