Traffic analysis resistant storage encryption using implicit and explicit data

• US 20100031057A1
• Filed: 02/01/2008
• Published: 02/04/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 02/01/2008
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Seagate Technology LLC (Seagate Technology Holdings Plc)
• Original Assignee: Seagate Technology LLC (Seagate Technology Holdings Plc)
• Inventors: Hars, Laszlo, Beaver, Donald Rozinak
• Application Number:
  US12/012,262
• Publication Number:
  US 20100031057A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 713/193
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/0631 Substitution permutation network [SPN], i.e. cipher composed of a number of stages or rounds each involving linear and nonlinear transformations, e.g. AES algorithms
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/0894 Escrow, recovery or storing of secret information, e.g. secret key escrow or cryptographic key storage

Abstract

An encryption scheme for mass storage devices employing a tweakable encryption scheme to add variability to the encrypted data to resist attacks by traffic analysis. Explicit tweak and implicit tweak may be used to add variability to plaintext prior to encryption and eventual storage. The tweak information is either stored on the storage device along with the encrypted data as in the case of an explicit tweak, or it is derived from another source when needed as in the case of an implicit tweak. The ciphertext is decrypted using either the stored explicit tweak value or derive the implicit tweak value to “de-tweak” the decrypted data prior to usage. The data may be deleted by destroying the cipher key(s) to render the ciphertext useless. The tweak information alone is useless for decryption, as the ciphertext needs to be decrypted with the cipher key(s).

Claims

1. A method for providing security of data in a data storage device, comprising data ciphering prior to writing to the storage device, which comprises:

tweaking plaintext of the data to be stored in the storage device to generate tweaked data;

encrypting the tweaked data to generate ciphertext of the data; and

storing the ciphertext in the data storage device.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising data deciphering after reading from the data storage device, comprising:

decrypting the ciphertext to obtain the tweaked data;

de-tweaking the tweaked data to obtain the plaintext of the data that was stored in the data storage device.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the tweaking step comprises applying a tweak value to the plaintext to generate the tweaked data.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the tweak value comprises an explicit tweak value derived from a tweak key and an explicit value.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the tweaking step comprises applying the explicit tweak value to the plaintext to generate a derived value, and appending the explicit value to the derived value to generate the tweaked data.

6. The method of claim 4, wherein the encrypting step comprises an encryption operation to generate encrypted data, and a tweak operation to tweak the encrypted data to generate tweaked ciphertext.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the tweak operation is based on a same explicit tweak value previously applied in the tweaking step.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the encrypting step further comprising appending the explicit value to the tweaked ciphertext to generate the ciphertext to be stored in the data storage device.

9. The method of claim 3, wherein the tweak value comprises an implicit tweak value.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the encrypting step comprising an encryption operation to generate encrypted data, and a tweak operation to tweak the encrypted data to generate tweaked ciphertext.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the tweak operation is based on a same implicit tweak value previously applied in the tweaking step.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein the implicit tweak value is derived from a tweak key and an implicit value.

13. The method of claim 3, wherein the tweak value comprises an explicit value, wherein the tweak value is applied to the plaintext by appending the explicit value to the plaintext.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one of tweaking and encrypting is under control by a controller provided within the disk drive.

15. The method as in claim 1, wherein at least one of tweaking and encrypting is under control by a host system.

16. The method as in claim 1, wherein the data storage device comprises a magnetic data storage device.

17. A data storage system, comprising:

a data storage medium;

a transducer reading and writing data with respect to the data storage medium;

a controller providing security of data in a data storage device, including undertaking data ciphering operation prior to writing to the storage device, wherein plaintext of the data is tweak to be stored in the storage device to generate tweaked data, the tweaked data is encrypted to generate ciphertext of the data, and the ciphertext is stored in the data storage device.

18. The data storage system as in claim 17, wherein the controller undertaking data deciphering after reading from the data storage device, wherein the ciphertext is decrypted to obtain the tweaked data, the tweaked data is de-tweaked to obtain the plaintext of the data that was stored in the data storage device.

19. The data storage system as in claim 17, wherein the data storage system comprises a magnetic disk drive.

20. A data processing system, comprising:

a data storage system as in claim 17; and

a host system operatively coupled to the disk drive system, said host system comprising a processor and an operating system, wherein the processor transfers data to and from the disk drive system for read and write operations.