WORD-INDIVIDUAL KEY GENERATION

摘要

The invention is based on the finding that the grouping of individually addressable units of a memory (12) into groups or pages (12a) already present in many systems can be used for substantially reducing the complexity of the address-dependent key generation while only insubstantially decreasing security, if a page pre-key is calculated (36) on the basis of a page address (30a) and the individual key is determined on the basis of the page pre-key and the word address (30b). As a result, the address-dependent key generation can be split up into a cryptographically demanding and relatively time-consuming process to be carried out rarely, namely page pre-key generation (34), and a fast step (36) of virtually low technical complexity which has to be carried out for every word or every individually addressable unit (12b), namely determination of the individual key on the basis of the page pre-key and the word address (30b).