Patent ID: 8590037

Claim:
A method of managing host application privileges to a hardware or software feature provided by a host, comprising: receiving at a host agent an authorization request from a host application, wherein the authorization request comprises a credential and an index value, and wherein the index value is associated with the hardware or software feature; the host agent, in response to the authorization request, obtaining credential validation data from a storage location in a non-volatile storage device corresponding to the index value; determining at the host agent if the credential is valid based on the credential validation data; transmitting an authorization from the host agent to the host application if the credential is valid, wherein the authorization comprises a session identification value; receiving at the host agent a request to access the hardware or software feature, wherein the request comprises the session identification value; the host agent granting the request if the session identification value is currently associated with a minimum permission required to access the hardware or software feature requested; receiving an instruction at the host agent from a third party to replace the credential validation data stored in the non-volatile storage device with invalid credential validation data that prevents the host application from calculating a valid credential such that future authorization requests by the host application using the credential to access the hardware or software feature will be denied; and the host agent instructing the non-volatile storage device to replace the credential validation data stored in the non-volatile storage device with the invalid credential validation data.