Patent ID: 9589156
Date: 2017-03-07
CPC Classifications: G06F,H04L

Claim:
1. A method for performing Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) block input/output (I/O) access to storage devices that can be encrypted, the method comprising: intercepting, by a UEFI interceptor block I/O driver, a caller-initiated block I/O command for I/O access to one or more target block addresses on a storage device; identifying whether any of the one or more target block addresses is for an encrypted storage block, wherein identifying includes: accessing a high water mark record stored in a master boot record of the storage device; and comparing the block addresses targeted by the block I/O command to the high water mark; in response to identifying an encrypted storage block among the one or more target block addresses, forwarding data associated with the encrypted target storage block to an encryption-decryption module to perform one of an encryption and a decryption of corresponding data; and performing final handling of the block I/O command and associated data using the block I/O driver; wherein I/O data stored within the encrypted storage block targeted by the block I/O command is first identified by the UEFI interceptor block I/O driver and processed by the encryption-decryption module before final handling of the block I/O command is performed by the block I/O driver.