The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Apr. 10, 2001
Filed:
Jan. 12, 2000
Paul C. Van Oorschot, Ottawa, CA;
Entrust Technologies Limited, Ottawa, CA;
Abstract
A method and apparatus for creating communities of trust within a secure communications system is accomplished by allowing end-users to obtain arbitrary lists of trusted public keys from other end-users and from associated authorities. Once an arbitrary list has been obtained by an end-user, the end-user determines whether it was obtained in a manner consistent with a security policy of the secured community. The security policy may enable an end-user to receive trusted public keys from other end-users, from associated authorities only, to receive public keys of associated authorities, other end users, or any combination thereof. When the arbitrary lists of trusted keys are obtained in a manner consistent with the security policy, the end-user adds keys of the arbitrary lists to a trusted key list. When a security-related operation is to be performed (e.g., verifying a signature of a received message or retrieving the encryption public key of a recipient for an outgoing message), any of the trusted keys contained within the trusted list may be used for authentication purposes.