Method and system for protection of digital information

Abstract

An information processing system including an encryption processing logic module and a decryption processing logic module for enabling the encryption of digital information to be decrypted with a decryption key K. The encryption processing module includes logic for encrypting the digital information, distributing the digital information and authorizing a user to decrypt the information. The decryption processing module includes logic for the user to communicate a user number n.sub.i to receive an authorization number a.sub.i from the authorization logic in the encryption processing module and extrication logic for extricating the decryption key. The user number n.sub.i uniquely identifies, and is valuable to, the user, so valuable in fact that the user would be unwilling to publically dislcose it. The extrication logic operates on a digital signet pair (a.sub.i, n.sub.i) consisting of the authorization number and user number, to extract K. The decryption logic then uses K to make the content available to the user. The extrication function is fully available to the user as a publicly-computable function in which it is computationally infeasible to use the extrication function to determine other valid digital signet pairs which can be used to extract K.