Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Pradyumna K Misra

Arnold S Miller

Aaron M Contorer

Dave D Straube

Michael R Seaman

Balan Sethu Raman

Michael M Swift

Michael R C Seaman

Darryl Ellis Rubin

Terence R Spies

Yuval Neeman

Clifford P Van Dyke

Paul J Leach

Richard Bruce Ward

Robert P Reichel

David S Montague

Bradley J Graziadio

Keith W Logan

Edward K Y Jung

James W Kelly

Nathaniel S Brown

Richard Kane Sailor

Bradley John Graziado

Andrew F Held

A system and method for expediting the replication of at least one specified object to a replica in a distributed computer system. A source object of a source replica determines that it has an urgent change to propagate through the distributed system, and informs a replication facility at the source replica of the urgent change. The facility extracts, or is provided with, the change information from that object, and the source replica communicates information representative of the change to a destination replica. A replication facility at the destination replica provides the change information to a destination replica object, which uses the information to make itself consistent with the source replica object.

Urgent replication facility

A software licensing system includes a license generator located at a licensing clearinghouse and at least one license server and multiple clients located at a company or entity. When a company wants a software license, it sends a purchase request (and appropriate fee) to the licensing clearinghouse. The license generator at the clearinghouse creates a license pack containing a set of one or more individual software licenses. The license generator digitally signs the license pack and encrypts it with the license server's public key. The license server is responsible for distributing the software licenses from the license pack to individual clients. When a client needs a license, the license server determines the client's operating system platform and grants the appropriate license. The license server digitally signs the software license and encrypts it using the client's public key. The license is stored locally at the client.

System and method for software licensing

A software licensing system includes a license generator located at a licensing clearinghouse and at least one license server and multiple clients located at a company or entity. When a company wants a software license, it sends a purchase request (and appropriate fee) to the licensing clearinghouse. The license generator at the clearinghouse creates a license pack containing a set of one or more individual software licenses. To prevent the license pack from being copied and installed on multiple license servers, the license generator assigns a unique license pack ID to the license pack and associates the license pack ID with the particular license server in a master license database kept at the licensing clearinghouse. The license generator digitally signs the license pack and encrypts it with the license server's public key. The license server is responsible for distributing the software licenses from the license pack to individual clients. When a client needs a license, the license server determines the client's operating system platform and grants the appropriate license. To prevent an issued license from being copied from one client machine to another, the software license is assigned to a specific client by including a client ID within the license. The software license also has a license ID that is associated with the client ID in a database record kept at the license server. The license server digitally signs the software license and encrypts it using the client's public key. The license is stored locally at the client.

An authentication system for a distributed network having multiple clients and a server enables a user to log on at any one of the clients with a password and receive his/her associated public/private key pair. The client computes a hash of the user ID to produce a first hash value H(ID) and a hash of the user ID concatenated with the user password P to produce a second hash value H(ID/P). The client constructs a message M containing the hash value H(ID), the hash value H(ID/P), and a randomly generated session key SK. The client encrypts the message M using the server's public key and sends the encrypted message to the server. The server decrypts the message using its private key to recover the message M. The server initially checks to see if the hash values are subject to a hostile cryptographic attack. If the check is negative, the server generates key source material S as a function of the hash value H(ID), the hash value H(ID/P), and a private value that is confidential to the server. The server encrypts the key source material S using the session key SK received in the message M and sends the encrypted key source material S to the client. The client decrypts the key source material using the session key SK to recover the key source material S. The client then constructs a public/private key pair unique to the user from the user ID, the user password, and the key source material S. More particularly, one implementation involves passing the hash value H(ID), the hash value H(ID/P), the raw password P, and the key source material S through a random number generator to produce two large, relatively prime numbers p and q which are used in an RSA public key system to generate a public/private key pair.

Distributed authentication system and method

A software system unifies directory services with the file system. Directory service entries and other files are all stored in a common logical format, such as an object format. The unification of files with directory service entries allows a common set of tools to operate on both such entities and allows a common name space to be utilized. Security measures are taken so as to prevent unauthorized access to the directory service entries.

Unification of directory service with file system service

Logon certificates are provided to support disconnected operation within the distributed system. Each logon certificate is a secure package holding credentials information sufficient to establish the identity and rights and privileges for a user/machine in a domain that is not their home domain. When a user/machine attempts to connect to the system at a domain other than the home domain of the user/machine, the user/machine presents a logon certificate that evidences his credentials. The domain where the user/machine attempts to connect to the system, decrypts and unseals the secure package as required to obtain the credentials information contained therein. If the user/machine has sufficient credentials, the user/machine is permitted to connect to the system. If the user/machine lacks sufficient credentials, the user/machine is not permitted to connect to the system.

Method and system for providing certificates holding authentication and

A network directory and naming service include fields for identifying instances of network resources and other objects by both logical and topological grouping. This combination of information facilitates automated efficient decision making with regard to replication of resources and updating the replicas in response to changes. The combination of logical and topological identification for resources also facilitates selection of a close replica in instances where a client requests access to a resource, such as a server, for which communicatively local and remote instances exist.

Method and apparatus for representing and applying network topological

A method and system for transparently executing code using a surrogate process is provided. In a preferred embodiment, the underlying system provides a surrogate program that can execute server dynamic-link libraries. When a client program wishes to access an object of a sharable class or a class factory object, the client program requests a service control manager to execute the server code for the sharable class. In response, the service control manager determines from a registration database whether the server code is available in the form of a server executable or a server dynamic-link library. If the server code is implemented as a server dynamic-link library, the service control manager either returns the location of the server dynamic-link library to the client program to be run in the execution context of the client program or the service control manager launches the surrogate program and requests it to load the server dynamic-link library, thereby isolating the server dynamic-link library from the client program execution context. When the surrogate process is launched, the surrogate process loads the requested server dynamic-link library and instantiates class factory objects corresponding to the sharable classes implemented by the server dynamic-link library. In one embodiment, multiple server dynamic-link libraries can be loaded within the same surrogate process. According to this embodiment, when the client program requests access to an object of a sharable class or to a class factory object, the service control manager determines whether the server code that implements the object can be loaded in a surrogate process that is already executing or whether a new surrogate process needs to be launched. Once the server dynamic-link library is loaded in the surrogate process and a reference to a server object returned to the client program, the client program can communicate with the server code in the same manner as if the server code had been loaded into the execution context of the client program.

Method and system for transparently executing code using a surrogate

A method is provided, in accordance with the present invention, for merging a source domain into a target domain in a network. Merging domains comprises replacing a first account identification for each account associated with the source domain by a second account identification associated with the target domain. Next, in accordance with the present invention, for each account associated with the source domain, the first account identification is added to an account security data structure storing account identifications with which the account has previously been associated when associated with a former, merged domain.

Method and apparatus for merging user accounts from a source security

A method and system for controlling access to entities on a network on which a plurality of servers are installed that use different operating systems. A request is entered by a user at a workstation on the network to set access permissions to an entity on the network in regard to a trustee. In response to the request, various application programming interfaces (APIs) are called to translate the generic request to set permissions on the entity into a format appropriate for the operating system that controls the entity. Assuming that the user has the appropriate rights to set access permissions to the entity as requested, and assuming that the trustee identified by the user is among those who can have rights set to the entity, the request made by the user is granted. Entities include both 'containers' and 'objects.' Entities are either software, such as directories (containers) and files (objects), or hardware, such as printers (objects).

Growing community of inventors

Issaquah, WA, United States of America

Pradyumna K Misra