Improving "Trusting the Edge" Through Cryptographic Key Hiding

The Security to the Edge strategy identifies a growth area in the development technologies to enable Trusting the Edge; particularly, two research areas are specified: i) hardening an edge node against physical attack; and ii) facilitating the ability of an edge node to monitor and communicate the state of its integrity. The thrust of this proposal is twofold: i) to describe a technique for hiding cryptographic keys in software---including the development of stealthy encryption/decryption techniques; and ii) to build on this capability to implement a challenge/response mechanism for the purposes of i) improving resistance to a class of physical attack (i.e. replay attacks); and ii) interrogating/evaluating an edge node for its status/integrity.