British Telecommunications Public Limited Company

British Telecommunications Corporation

Gery M Ducatel

Joshua Daniel

Theo Dimitrakos

Zhan Cui

Mohammad Zoualfaghari

Nader Azarmi

Simon Giles Thompson

Xiaofeng Du

Marcus Alfred Thint

A computer implemented method of access control for a restricted resource of a resource provider in a network connected computer system, wherein a blockchain data structure accessible via the network stores digitally signed records validated by network connected miner software components, the method including: identifying an access control role definition for access to the resource, the role including a specification of access permissions; defining a cryptocurrency for indicating authorization to access the resource, the cryptocurrency being formed of tradeable units of value associated with records in the blockchain and wherein transfer of the cryptocurrency between records in the blockchain is validated by the miners; receiving a request from an authenticated resource consumer for authorization to access the resource; and submitting a blockchain transaction to the miner components to transfer a quantity of cryptocurrency to a consumer record in the blockchain, the transaction including an identification of the role, such that the consumer record identifies that the consumer is authorized to access the resource in accordance with the role definition.

Access control

A computer implemented method for code distribution by a base station to a target device via a network, the distribution being made via one or more distribution servers arranged between the base station and the target device on the network, is disclosed.

Untrusted code distribution

A computer implemented method for access control for a consumer accessing a restricted resource in a network connected computer system, the method including receiving a continuous sequence of data records relating to use, by the consumer, of the restricted resource, the resource being accessed by the consumer over an access network; continuously comparing the data records with an access control policy for the restricted resource; in response to a determination that the behavior is non-compliant with respect to the policy, generating and communicating a shared secret to the consumer, the shared secret being communicated via a communications channel other than the access network; receiving a response to a challenge from the user via the access network; and notifying the computer system that access to the resource by the consumer should be precluded based on a comparison of the response to the challenge and the shared-secret.

Out-of-band challenge in a computer system

A computer implemented method to execute a software application in a network attached computing environment, the application being defined by a set of required software services to constitute the application, the required services being selected from services indicated in a component registry, the method including recording a block to a blockchain data structure, the new block identifying at least a subset of the set of required services; receiving one or more further blocks from the blockchain data structure, each of the further blocks referencing a service provider for providing one or more of the required services; and selecting one or more service providers identified in the blockchain and defining a specification for an application assembler component to assemble the software application, the specification identifying selected service providers.

Assured application services

A computer implemented method of a resource provider for access control for a restricted resource in a network connected computer system, wherein a blockchain data structure accessible via the network stores digitally signed records validated by network connected miner software components including a provider record associated with the resource provider, the method including: identifying an access control role definition for access to the resource, the role including a specification of access permissions; receiving a request from a resource consumer for access to the resource; communicating, to the resource consumer, an indication of a quantity of a cryptocurrency required for access to the resource; and in response to a determination that the required quantity of cryptocurrency is transferred to the provider record in the blockchain, the transfer being caused by a blockchain transaction including an identification of the role and the transaction being validated by a miner component, granting the consumer access to the resource in accordance with the role definition.

Expendable access control

A computer implemented method of a network connected data storage system, the method including receiving, via the network, and storing a data set including a plurality of data items encrypted using an index-based searchable encryption scheme, wherein the searchable encryption scheme has associated a server index and a client index; receiving, via the network, and storing a set of hashed information for each of a plurality of queries of the data set, each item of hashed information including a hash of a query and a hash of an expected result of executing the query using the server index; receiving, via the network, a query from a data requester to retrieve a set of data items from the data store and a hash of an expected result of executing the received query using the server index; generating a result of the received query for the data set based on the server index; and responsive to a comparison of a hash of the generated result, the received hash of the expected result, and the hashes of expected results in the set of hashed information, granting access for the requester to the data set.

Systems and methods for data access authentication using searchable encryption

A computer implemented method for validating use of a computing resource by a requester software component including: validating a characteristic of the requester; generating a first transaction defining criteria for consumption of the resource by the requester, the first transaction being encrypted with a private key from a public key/private key pair and being added as part of a block of transactions to a blockchain data structure; generating a subsequent encrypted transaction corresponding to a request of the requester to consume the resource, the subsequent transaction referring to the first transaction, wherein the subsequent transaction is validated by a transaction miner computing component from a plurality of miners by authenticating the transaction using the public key and verifying compliance with the criteria defined in each transaction.

Validating computer resource usage

A computer implemented method to provide allocation of one or more computing resources for a consumer computing component, each resource having a resource type and being provided by one or more resource providers, and the consumer having associated a quantity of tradeable value constraining an extent of resource consumption.

Controlled resource provisioning in distributed computing environments

Computer implemented methods for access control for a restricted resource in a computer system and related methods train a hierarchical temporal memory and use cryptocurrency allocations and blockchain records to determine whether resource consumers are authorized or unauthorized to access the restricted resource.

Hierarchical temporal memory for expendable access control

Disclosed herein is a computer implemented method for receiving code distributed by a base station at a target device via a network, the distribution being made to one or more destination devices including the target device via one or more distribution servers arranged between the base station and the one or more devices on the network, wherein the base station maintains a first blockchain data structure storing one or more blocks and having a state determined by a most recently committed block in the first blockchain.

Blockchain state reliability determination

A method of comparing the semantic similarity of two different text phrases in which the grammatical structure of the two different text phrases is analyzed and a keyword set for each of the different text phrases is derived The semantic similarity of the phrases can be determined in accordance with the grammatical structure of the two different text phrases and the contents of the two keyword sets.

Semantic textual analysis

A selector apparatus to select one or more shared authentication facilities for a software service executing in a virtualized shared computing environment, the software service including an interface through which a user request to access a restricted resource of the service is receivable, the request having associated a user context defining one or more characteristics of the user, and the software service further having associated a plurality of authentication rules for the service, wherein each rule is associated with one or more user contexts and identifies one or more shared authentication facilities for the computing environment, the selector apparatus comprising: a launcher, responsive to a user request received via the interface, adapted to instantiate one or more authentication facilities in accordance with an authentication rule retrieved based on a user context for the received request, so as to generate one or more challenges for the user to authenticate the user, wherein the authentication rule further defines one or more parameters for the identified authentication facilities.

Dynamic identity checking for a software service in a virtual machine

An authentication apparatus to authenticate a user requesting access to a restricted resource in a computer system comprising: an interface adapted to receive an indication of a user request to access the restricted resource, the request having associated a current user context defining one or more characteristics of the user; a receiver adapted to receive a user selected authentication scheme from a set of authentication schemes for the current user context; a comparator adapted to compare the user selected authentication scheme with a set of user-specific rules, each rule indicating one or more authentication schemes for a user context as preferred authentication schemes; an access controller adapted to permit access to the restricted resource based on the comparison so as to prevent access to the restricted resource when the rules indicate one or more authentication schemes other than the user selected authentication scheme are preferred for the current user context.

User authentication based on user characteristic authentication rules

A computer implemented method for detecting malicious events occurring with respect to a blockchain data structure comprising: defining a transaction creation profile according to which transactions can be generated and submitted to the blockchain; submitting a transaction to the blockchain, the transaction causing the generation of a profiler data structure in the blockchain including executable code to generate profile transactions to be submitted to the blockchain according to the transaction creation profile; monitoring the blockchain to identify profile transactions; and comparing identified profile transactions with the transaction creation profile to detect a deviation from the transaction creation profile, such detection corresponding to a malicious event occurring with respect to the blockchain.

Mitigating blockchain attack

An electronic document retrieval system is disclosed. It has particular utility to World-Wide Web searching. The system requires webmasters to put forward categories into which the pages on their web-site might sensibly be divided, and to provide a list of those categories together with a list of popular keywords associated with those categories to a global search engine. The global search engine is then able to augment one or more of its search results with links to category-heading pages which most closely relate to the query provided by the user. In this way, a user is able to find the page most relevant to his query more rapidly than has hitherto been possible.

Growing community of inventors

Ipswich, United Kingdom

Gery M Ducatel