International Business Machines Corporation

Willard G Bouricius

Paul E Stuckert

Horst Feistel

The system provides both electronic signature and message verification with a minimum of excess coding information on an instantaneous basis and is easily restartable in a store and forward environment. The system is based on the concept of a vault or central authority. The vault is in essence a physically secured Authenticator designed as a hardware automation which is not under control of any operating system. The system is a terminal based network wherein all terminals or users may communicate directly or through a central CPU. All secure electronic signature verification transactions must be transacted through the central facility which includes said vault. The vault and all terminals include an identical key-controlled block-cipher cryptographic facility wherein each user at a terminal has access only to his own key and wherein the vault has access to all user keys. At the end of a transaction, a user A (originator) and a user B (receiver) each have uniquely encrypted messages which can be utilized in later arbitration proceedings wherein user A cannot later deny having sent a message or its contents and similarly user B cannot deny having received the message or its specific content. The vault provides facilities for effective legal arbitration and is also simple to operate in such a n-to-n network without using more than one key per person.

High security system for electronic signature verification

An electronic funds transfer system wherein it is required that a bank be reasonably guaranteed that the two parties to a retail transaction (i.e., a person and a retailer) agree on the transaction before the funds transfer takes place. The message including the transaction information is encrypted by the person using a unique encryption key (K.sub.P) stored in a highly secure storage location in his own personal portable transaction device (XATR) and his data storage and transfer card (DSTC) and this first encrypted message is sent to the retailer who doubly encrypts the initially received encrypted message from P under his own unique encryption key (K.sub.R) and this doubly encrypted message is sent to the bank. The person also sends the transaction message to the retailer in clear, and the retailer first verifies the message and then, utilizing his own encryption key (K.sub.R), encrypts same and similarly sends it to the bank. The bank utilizing unique retailer and customer identification data sent with the message, accesses a 'key' file and first extracts the retailer's key (K.sub.R) and decrypts a first portion of the message, extracts the person's key (K.sub.P) and decrypts a second portion of the received message. The bank then compares a predetermined portion of the transaction message originating with the person with a similar portion received from the retailer and if identical, the appropriate funds transfer is made. If the messages do not agree, a predetermined default procedure is initiated.

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Katonah, NY, United States of America

Willard G Bouricius