HARDWARE ISOLATED SECURE PROCESSING SYSTEM WITHIN A SECURE ELEMENT

• US 20180268132A1
• Filed: 05/16/2018
• Published: 09/20/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 12/05/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: NXP B.V. (NXP Semiconductors NV)
• Original Assignee: NXP B.V. (NXP Semiconductors NV)
• Inventors: Buer, Mark, Trost, Theodore, Mendel, Jacob
• Granted Patent: US 10,552,604 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 12/1408 by using cryptography for digital transmission H04L9/00
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 13/16 for access to memory bus G06F13/28 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 13/4068 Electrical coupling
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 13/4282 on a serial bus, e.g. I2C bus, SPI bus on daisy chain buses G06F13/4247
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/53 by executing in a restricted environment, e.g. sandbox or secure virtual machine
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/602 Providing cryptographic facilities or services
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/76 in application-specific integrated circuits [ASIC] or field-programmable devices, e.g. field-programmable gate arrays [FPGA] or programmable logic devices [PLD]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2212/1052 Security improvement
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2221/034 Test or assess a computer or a system
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 10/00 Energy efficient computing, e.g. low power processors, power management or thermal management

Abstract

Systems and methods are provided that allow a secure processing system (SPS) to be implemented as a hard macro, thereby isolating the SPS from a peripheral processing system (PPS). The SPS and the PPS, combination, may form a secure element that can be used in conjunction with a host device and a connectivity device to allow the host device to engage in secure transactions, such as mobile payment over a near field communications (NFC) connection. As a result of the SPS being implemented as a hard macro isolated from the PPS, the SPS may be certified once, and reused in other host devices without necessitating re-certification.

Claims

1-17. -17. (canceled)

18. A system, comprising:

a host device comprising a host processor and a first flash memory unit;

a secure processing sub-system for at least one of storing secure data, storing target of evaluation (TOE) security functions data, and providing a platform on which secure application. software is loaded, the secure processing sub-system comprising an isolation bridge and implemented as a hard macro;

a peripheral processing sub-system for relaying communications to and from the secure processing sub-system and the host device, wherein the secure processing sub-system is hardware isolated from the peripheral processing sub-system;

a connectivity device for providing communication capabilities for the host device; and

a plurality of interfaces comprising;

at least one physical transport slave interface within the peripheral processing subsystem for the relaying of the communications to and from the secure processing sub-system and the host processor;

one of a single wire protocol (SWP) or a dual wire protocol (DWP) interface for accessing the first flash memory unit; and

at least a physical transport master interface within the secure processing subsystem for accessing a second flash memory unit dedicated to the secure processing sub-system.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein the physical transport slave interface comprises

at least one of an inter-integrated circuit interface (I2C), a serial peripheral slave interface (SPI), and a universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter (UART) interface, and wherein the physical transport master interface comprises a master SPI.

20. The system of claim 18, wherein the connectivity device comprises a near field communications (NFC) controller and at least one of a Bluetooth controller, a wireless local area network (WLAN) controller, a cellular communications controller, and a global positioning satellite (GPS) controller.

21. The system of claim 20, wherein the one of the SWP or the DWP interface is further configured to provide access to the NFC controller and the at least one of the Bluetooth controller, the WLAN controller, the cellular communications controller, and the GPS controller.