Time delayed key escrow
US5768388A · kind A · utility
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Mar 21, 1996 |
| Grant date | Jun 16, 1998 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Mar 21, 2016 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
- CPC primaryH04L9/085
- WIPO fieldDigital communication
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
Methods for designing encryption algorithms with different levels of security for different parties: "easier" (but requiring some work nonetheless) to break for some parties (e.g., the government) than for other parties (the adversaries at large). This is achieved by a new form of key escrow in which the government gets some information related to the secret keys of individuals but not the secret keys themselves. The information given to the government enables it to decrypt with a predetermined level of computational difficulty less than that for adversaries at large. The new key escrow methods are verifiable. Verification information can be provided to the government so that it can verify that the information escrowed is sufficient to enable it to decrypt with the predetermined level of computational difficulty. The fact that the government must perform some computation to break the encryption schemes of individual users provides a serious deterrent against massive wiretapping.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.