Microsofts new crypto patent

[Bo Elkjaer]

United States Patent 6,163,841 
Venkatesan ,   et al. December 19, 2000 


Technique for producing privately authenticatable cryptographic signatures
and for authenticating such signatures 


Abstract

A technique for generating, for a given message to be signed, an authentic 
cryptographic signature that can be authenticated, by a recipient of the 
signed message, as having originated from a signor of the message; and
appropriately authenticating such a signature. Specifically, this
technique, given a message, such as, e.g., a numerical product copy
identifier (83, 93), forms an authentic signature (87, 97), based on
public-key cryptosystem, through use of generator value selected from
points on an elliptic curve over a finite field. The authentic signature 
is generated using the generator value in conjunction with three keys; 
namely, a public key, a private key and a secret key, and thus 
substantially increases the security associated with cryptographic
signatures generated through a conventional two-key public-key
cryptosystem. A unique product copy indicia can be formed by concatenating
the identifier, for a given product copy, with its corresponding authentic
signature. During subsequent user installation of that copy to a computer,
the user enters the indicia when prompted by execution of an installation
program which, in turn, privately authenticates the signature contained in
the indicia in order to continue or prematurely terminate the 
installation. 


Inventors: Venkatesan; Ramarathnam R. (Bellevue, WA); Montgomery;
Peter L. (San Rafael, CA) 
Assignee: Microsoft Corporation (Redmond, WA) 
Appl. No.: 102851
Filed: June 23, 1998

Link: (May be wrapped into garbage. Use patented cut'n paste technology to
restore)
http://164.195.100.11/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1='6,163,841'.WKU.&OS=PN/6,163,841&RS=PN/6,163,841


Yours
Bo Elkjaer, Denmark

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