Hardware algorithms of Guardant dongles have the following features:
- Conversion of data is performed not inside the application but in the dongle. This eliminates the possibility of learning algorithm using debuggers and makes senseless the deletion of protection modules from the program.
- Data is converted by a strong algorithm, which secret key is stored in the dongle memory. And it is kept inside the dongle memory in the process of conversion. The tamperproofness of the algorithm suggests that even if the algorithm itself is extracted, the screening of the secret key will take a lot of computational resources and it is impossible to figure it out using analytical methods.
- The developer of the application knows only the algorithm descriptor and the developers of the dongles know only the microprogram processing this descriptor. Thus, the specific format of hardware algorithm is not known to anyone.
- The protected application can use several unique descriptors of hardware algorithms for converting different information. This will make the hacker select a format for each one of them.