CRYPTO-POINTERS FOR SECURE DATA STORAGE

摘要

The present invention relates to pairing of a different cryptographic key with each pointer in a data structure to form a crypto-pointer (100). The cryptographic key is used to encrypt the contents of all data stored at the physical location on the storage device indicated by the pointer (100). Preferably the only data accessible in an unencrypted form is contained in cells that are reachable from root-set crypto-pointers (100). Once the crypto-pointer (100) associated with a particular memory cell (200) is deleted, normally by overwriting or explicitly zeroing the crypto-pointer (100), the contents of the memory cell (200) become inaccessible because the data stored at that cell is in encrypted form (cipher text) and the crypto-pointer (100) that included the cryptographic key for decrypting the cipher text has been deleted from the system.