Apple Inc.

David M O'Rourke

Kevin M Arnold

Leland A Wallace

Steven Neil Simon

Greg Vaughan

Matthew M Patenaude

Christopher P Jalbert

Jeffrey A Connelly

A duplicate suppression protocol is introduced in order to suppress duplicate entries from appearing in a list of available network resources. With the duplicate suppression protocol of the present invention, a computer that wishes to query for network resources also asks for duplicate suppression information from the responding network resources. The duplicate suppression information for a particular network resource specifies identifiers associated with that network resource for various protocols. Thus, if a particular network resource responds to more than one network resource request from a single requesting entity, that requesting entity will be able to locate duplicate network resource information. Thus, a single unified list of network resources available for various different protocols may be presented with all duplicate network resources removed.

Method and arrangement for suppressing duplicate network resources

Private message system, method, and apparatus are described. A private message that includes encrypted data and identifying information indicating a recipient client device authorized to read the private message is stored at a server computer. Since the client devices perform all encryption and decryption processing, the server computer stores the private message in a platform agnostic manner and without performing any encryption/decryption related processes. Although any number of recipient devices can receive the private message, only a recipient client device authorized in accordance with the identifying information can read the private message.

Recipient blind cryptographic access control for publicly hosted message and data streams

A method for a client computer to find a network address of a server computer by searching for the network address using at a backup search procedure if the address of the server computer cannot be identified using a primary search procedure. The primary and backup search procedures can be performed in parallel and multiple backup search procedures can be performed to identify the address of the server computer. Alternatively, the primary and backup search procedures can be performed in serial wherein the backup search procedure is performed only when the primary search procedure does not identify the address of the server computer.

Replication server selection method

A mechanism that allows a user to easily configure a rules engine to apply rules to decide which requests for access to a user's computer resources are to be granted and which are denied. A trusted token, such as a certificate of identity issued by a trusted third party authority that verifies identities of computer users, is included in a calling card object provided by the requesting user to the (server) computer that controls the resources desired by the requester. Additional conditions for access may be specified as desired by the user of the server computer.

Ad-hoc user account creation

A method for determining group membership in a computer system, the method comprising: obtaining an identifier that describes a member of a group, the member of a group having a member hash table that contains group membership information describing to what groups a member belongs; performing a primary search of a plurality of groups to determine if each group contains the member's identifier, each group in the plurality having a group hash table that describes to what other groups the group belongs, caching the results of the primary search in the member hash table, for each group to which the member belongs, performing a secondary search of a plurality of groups to determine what groups contain the group to which the member belongs, and caching the results of the secondary search into the group hash table and merging the results into the member hash table, and reading the member hash table to determine group membership.

Caching permissions information

Method and arrangement for supressing duplicate network resources

A method for authenticating computers is disclosed. The method comprises issuing a credential from a first computer to a second computer. When the second computer authenticates to the first computer, the second computer transmits the credential and a first challenge to the first computer. The first computer determines whether the credential is valid, computes a first response to the first challenge, and generates a second challenge. The first computer transmits the first response and the second challenge to the second computer. The second computer determines whether the first response is valid and computes a second response to the second challenge. The second computer transmits the second response to the first computer in order to verify and authenticate the computers.

Server computer issued credential authentication

The invention provides a cryptographic method which includes receiving at a first entity a second public key M. At least one of a first session key Kand a first secret Smay be generated based on the second public key M. A first random nonce Nmay be generated which may be encrypted with at least one of the first session key Kand the first secret Sto obtain an encrypted random nonce. The encrypted random nonce may be transmitted from the first entity. In response to transmitting the encrypted random nonce, the first computer may receive a data signal containing a modification of the first random nonce N. If the modification of the first random nonce Nwas correctly performed, then at least one of (i) opening a communication link at the first computer, and (ii) generating a first initialization vector Iis performed.

Growing community of inventors

San Jose, CA, United States of America

David M O'Rourke