A New Approach for Crypto Off-loading Based on Personal HSM

• Published in: 2023 7th Cyber Security in Networking Conference (CSNet) pp. 23 - 26
• Main Author: Urien, Pascal
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 16-10-2023
• Subjects: Authentication; Computer crime; Cryptography; Elasticity; Hardware; Performance evaluation; Secure Element; Security; Servers; Trust
• ISSN: 2768-0029
• DOI: 10.1109/CSNet59123.2023.10339762

Crypto off-loading aims at computing cryptographic procedures in dedicated hardware in order to increase performances or to provide more security and trust. For example cloud providers offer crypto off-loading services realized in hardware secure module (HSM), typically for SSL/TLS asymmetric operations required for HTTP server authentication. We recently introduced the concept of personal HSM devices, based on secure elements grids. In this paper we present a new approach based on these devices, which relies on two features. First a direct TLS session with secure element enables a simple and secure key management. Second performance elasticity is made possible by using multiple secure elements. We present experimental results for a personal HSM equipped with ten secure elements.