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HSM Administration Guide > Decommissioning, Zeroizing, or Resetting an HSM to Factory Conditions > Comparison of Destruction/Denial Actions

Comparison of Destruction/Denial Actions

Various operations on the SafeNet Luna HSM are intended to make HSM contents unavailable to potential intruders. The effect of those actions are summarized and contrasted in the following table, along with notes on how to recognize and how to recover from each scenario.

Scenario 1: MTK is destroyed, HSM is unavailable, but use/access can be recovered after reboot (See Note 1)

Scenario 2: KEK is destroyed (Real-Time Clock and NVRAM), HSM contents cannot be recovered without restore from backup See Note 2)

Scenario 3: Appliance admin password reset

Event

Scen. 1

Scen. 2 Scen. 3 How to discover
(See Note 3)
How to recover

Three bad SO login attempts

lunash:> hsm zeroize

lunash:> hsm factoryreset

Any change to a destructive policy

Firmware rollback (See Note 4)

NO YES NO

Syslog entry

"HSM IS ZEROIZED" in HSM Details (from hsm show command)

Restore HSM objects from Backup

Login to SafeNet Luna Network HSM "recover" account (local serial connection)

NO NO YES Syslog entry shows login by "recover" Log into appliance as admin, using the reset password "PASSWORD" and change to a secure password

Hardware tamper

Undervoltage or overvoltage during operation

Under-temperature or over-temperature during operation

Chassis interference (such as cover, fans, etc.)

Software (command-initiated) tamper

lunash:> hsm stm transport

YES NO NO

Parse Syslog for text like "tamper", "TVK was corrupted", or "Generating new TVK", indicating that a tamper event was logged. Example:

RTC: external tamper latched/
MTK: security function was 
zeroized on previous tamper 
event and has not been 
restored yet  
   

Also, keywords in Syslog like: "HSM internal error", "device error"

SafeNet Luna Network HSM appliance front panel flashes error 30.

Reboot
[See Note 1]

Decommission

Pressing the Decommission button on the back of the appliance

NO YES NO

Look for log entry like:

RTC: tamper 2 signal/Zeroizing HSM after decommission...LOG(INFO): POWER-UP LOG DUMP END

Restore HSM objects from Backup  

Note 1: MTK is an independent layer of encryption on HSM contents, to manage tamper and Secure Transport Mode. A destroyed MTK is recovered on next reboot. If MTK cannot be recovered, only restoring from backup onto a new or re-manufactured HSM can retrieve your keys and HSM data.   

Note 2: KEK is an HSM-wide encryption layer that encrypts all HSM objects, excluding only MTK, RPK, a wrapping key, and a couple of keys used for legacy support. A destroyed KEK cannot be recovered. If the KEK is destroyed, only restoring from backup can retrieve your keys and HSM data.

Note 3: To check the health of a remote HSM, script a frequent login to the HSM host and execution of a subset of HSM commands. If a command fails, check the logs for an indication of the cause.

Note 4: These actions all create a situation where hsm init is required, or strongly recommended before the HSM is used again.

In addition, another event/action that has a destructive component is HSM initialization. See HSM Initialization.