How do you hide secret keys in code?

Question

I\'ve wondered for some time how some software hides secret keys in such a way that they can\'t be trivially discovered. Just a few examples:

• DVD Player Softwa

Answer 1

If you can afford it, the best is to store the private key in a cryptographic USB token. The key is write only, ie you can set it but not read it. The token does the cryptographic operations internally, in its hardware. It becomes very complicated to retrieve the key (if the token has no known vulnerability, which is not the case with older ones).