Patent ID: 7392404

Claim:
A method of operating a device connected to a terminal, the method for taking advantage of wait cycles encountered between transmitted characters in a message received on a port, the method comprising: receiving characters of a transmitted message from the terminal timed according to a reference clock; operating a processor clock that is faster than the reference clock used for processing transactions with a terminal to which the device is connected; processing each character of a message in a subset of processor clock cycles that correspond to one reference clock cycle such that the processor has wait cycles for each clock cycle of the reference clock; performing a memory management task during the additional clock cycles encountered between characters transmitted as part of a message according to a port protocol, comprising: executing a security measure to determine tampering associated with a memory during wait cycles encountered between characters transmitted as part of a message according to a port protocol, wherein the port protocol facilitates access to the memory; and executing a tamper protocol in response to a determination of tampering to prevent an improper access to the memory.