Effective protection of computer data traffic in constrained resource scenarios

Abstract

Described is a system and method that protect certain classes of sensitive data traveling across an accessible transmission medium, such as an internal bus in a device, from automated attacks. The protection is particularly useful for resource-constrained and/or security constrained components. Automated attacks depend on analyzing data characteristics such as bit pattern signatures and/or frequency distributions to succeed. To preclude such automated attacks, various alternatives of the present invention internally alter the sensitive data at a data source prior to transmission, in a synchronized way such that the altered data is internally reversible at the destination resource. Data alteration includes interspersing random data into a data stream (e.g., bitstream or stream of packets), and interspersing data of varying length on the bus. Synchronization algorithms enable the data source and the destination resource to pad and remove the interspersed data in relatively complex ways even with resource-constrained and/or security constrained components.