Securing Non-Volatile RAM with Merkle Trees

Abstract

Non-volatile random access memory (NVRAM) is an exciting and relatively new technology that we think may be able to replace current main memory technology due to its lower power consumption, lower cost, and comparable speed to DRAM. However, due to the persistent nature of NVRAM, it presents security risks that are not found in traditional RAM. The necessity to encrypt and verify the integrity of the contents of NVRAM led to the use of counter-mode encryption and to some extent the use of Merkle trees to verify the data’s integrity. Decrypting and verifying data, however, slows down the overall speed of the computer so we propose restructuring the tree in unique ways to speed up the verification of data and thus make NVRAM a viable main memory option.