SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DEVICE DEPENDENT AND RATE LIMITED KEY GENERATION

Disclosed herein are systems, methods, and non-transitory computer-readable storage media for generating a device dependent cryptographic key in a rate-limited way. A system configured to practice the method first receives data associated with a user. The data associated with the user can be a password, a personal identification number (PIN), or a hash of the password. Then the system performs a first encryption operation on the user data based on a device-specific value to yield first intermediate data and performs a second encryption operation on the first intermediate data based on the device-specific value to yield second intermediate data. Then the system iteratively repeats the second encryption operation until a threshold is met, wherein each second encryption operation is performed on the second intermediate data from a previous second encryption operation. The iterations produce a final cryptographic key which the system can then output or use for a cryptographic operation.