DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Claims 1, 3, 4, 6-8, 10, 12-14, 16 and 18 are pending. Claims 2, 5, 9, 11, 15 and 17 are canceled.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments and amendments, filed 07/22/26, with respect to 35 USC 101 have been fully considered and are persuasive. The rejection of claims 1, 3-8, 10-14, and 16-18 under 35 USC 101 has been withdrawn.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claims 1, 4, 6-8, 12-14, and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 2014/0195576 to Kaplan et al., and further in view of US 9,143,317 to Chevallier-Mames et al.
Regarding claim 1, Kaplan teaches a method for determining whether a true random number generator is operating as designed and implemented while protecting against a side-channel attack (abstract, 0018-0019: hardware random number generator 100 utilizing a health monitor 112 to detect external tampering…perform some action in response to detecting a loss of entropy),
comprising:
generating, by a processor, an initial bit string using the true random number generator (0016: “receive raw input entropy 102 from an entropy source 101, which includes ring oscillators “).
Kaplan lacks or fails to expressly disclose a shuffled bit string.
However, Chevallier-Mames teaches
generating, by the processor, a shuffled bit string by applying a sequence of bit operations to the initial bit string to shuffle bits of the initial bit string (0009, 0019-0020: to protect data in memory rom side-channel attacks, rotating (shuffling) columns of a data matrix before operations are performed, stating: “rotating the columns of the cipher state matrix according to a first rotation index”);
obtaining, by the processor, a Hamming weight of the initial bit string by computing a Hamming weight of the shuffled bit string to prevent leaking of the initial bit string, wherein the Hamming weight of the initial bit string is the Hamming weight of the shuffled bit string (Kaplan, 0047 and 0049: computing a Hamming weight (i.e. counting the number of ones) to test the entropy bits. A counter that “counts the number of ones generated by its corresponding ring oscillator” and overall counter 411 that “counts the number of ones generated by the entropy source 101). (Chevallier-Mames teaches applying column rotations (shuffling) merely moves data around without altering the underlying byte values, meaning it perfectly preserves the original data, 0021-0023. Because the 1s and 0s are merely rearranged, the total number of 1s (the Hamming weight) remains mathematically identical.).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to apply the bit shuffling techniques of Chevallier-Mames to the raw entropy bits in Kaplan before they hit Kaplan’s health monitor counter, in order to protect against side channel eavesdropping.
Kaplan, as modified above, further discloses
determining, by the processor, whether the true random number generator is operating as designed and implemented based on the Hamming weight of the shuffled bit string and a half of a length of the initial bit string (Kaplan evaluates the health of the TRNG by checking if the Hamming weight over a specific bit length falls within bounds derived from exactly half the length of big string. Specifically, Kaplan looks at window 256 cycles (the “length”) and determines if the TRNG is operating as designed by checking if the counted ones fall between a “lower limit of 104 and upper limit of 152”. These limits are based on the “expected mean value 128”, 0045. Because 128 is exactly half of the 256 bit length, Kaplan teaches determining health based on the Hamming weight compared against half the length of the string).
As per claims 7, 8, 12, 13, 14 and 18, this is an apparatus and medium version of the claimed method discussed above in claims 1, 4 and 6 wherein all claimed limitations have also been addressed and/or cited as set forth above.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3, 10 and 16 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Conclusion
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to AUBREY H WYSZYNSKI whose telephone number is (571)272-8155. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9-5.
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/AUBREY H WYSZYNSKI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2434
