Patent ID: 7900060

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: a central processing unit; a disk communicatively coupled to the central processing unit, the disk including security logic to prevent the central processing unit from accessing data on the disk until the central processing unit has been authenticated; a non-volatile memory to store an encrypted disk key, encrypted with a master key of a security processor; and the security processor communicatively coupled to the central processing unit, the security processor including encryption/decryption logic, wherein the encryption/decryption logic is configured to i) receive the encrypted disk key stored in the non-volatile memory, ii) decrypt the encrypted disk key with the security processor's master key, and iii) utilize the disk key in an operation to authenticate the central processing unit, wherein the security processor is configured to i) receive an encrypted challenge from the disk security logic, ii) decrypt the encrypted challenge, and iii) encrypt a response communicated to the disk security logic; wherein the disk is organized into one or more sections, and the security logic includes a disk key for each of the one or more sections, and wherein the disk key associated with a particular section is used to encrypt or decrypt data stored in that particular section; and wherein the disk grants access to data if the encrypted response matches a fixed-length character string generated by the security logic of the disk.