Intel Corporation

Exelis Inc.

David Allan Schollmeyer

Chad W Mercer

Hormuzd M Khosravi

Adrian R Pearson

Peter Munguia

Lee Noehring

Steve J Brown

Larry H Gass

An embodiment uses hardware secrets secured within a security engine to provide a secure solution for field key provisioning. An embodiment is operating system independent due to the out-of-band communications with the security engine. Secrets need not be provisioned during manufacturing time. An embodiment may ensure only security engine specific provisioned secrets are used at runtime. Other embodiments are addressed herein.

Secure remote credential provisioning

A system and method for controlling a flow of data from a network interface controller (NIC) to a host processor coupled to the NIC. Data such as IP packets are received by the NIC and may be transmitted to the host processor for further processing such as firewall processing. The NIC is in communication with the host processor using, for example, a software driver running on the host processor. The NIC may monitor the processing load on the host processor as it handles packet data received from the NIC. As the processing load increases, the NIC may begin to throttle the quantity of packets being sent to the host processor in order to avoid overloading the host processor. The throttling may be governed by a heuristic throttling function.

System and method for controlling a flow of data a network interface controller to a host processor

A portion of a firmware program may be automatically upgraded during power on of a processor-based system. A firmware upgrade file signed by a private key is authenticated using a public key accessible to the firmware program. The authentication and upgrade is performed automatically. Interrupted upgrades are anticipated and resolved by the firmware program. The public key is duplicated and is itself upgradable, in case the private key changes. The firmware program may be locked to prevent both viewing and unauthorized upgrades of the public keys or other parts of the firmware program.

Firmware security key upgrade algorithm

Growing community of inventors

Chandler, AZ, United States of America

David Allan Schollmeyer