Inventors:
Carl U. Buscaglia - Clinton Corners NY, US
Vincenzo Condorelli - Poughkeepsie NY, US
Kevin C. Gotze - Poughkeepsie NY, US
Nihad Hadzic - Wappingers Falls NY, US
Donald W. Plass - Poughkeepsie NY, US
Tamas Visegrady - Zurich, CH
Assignee:
International Business Machines Corporation - Armonk NY
International Classification:
G06F 12/14
Abstract:
A method and apparatus is disclosed for preventing the unintended retention of secret data caused by preferred state/burn-in in secure electronic modules. Sequentially storing the data and its inverse on alternating clock cycles, and by actively overwriting it to destroy it, prevents SRAM devices from developing a preferred state. By encrypting a relatively large amount of secret data with a master encryption key, and storing said master key in this non-preferred state storage, the electronic module conveniently extends this protection scheme to a large amount of data, without the overhead of investing or actively erasing the larger storage area.