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:
Mar. 09, 2004
Filed:
Mar. 08, 2001
Kevin A. Kwiat, Whitesboro, NY (US);
Benjamin C. Hardekopf, Rome, NY (US);
The United States of America as represented by the Secretary of the Air Force, Washington, DC (US);
Abstract
A method and apparatus is disclosed which provides improved security in distributed-environment voting. At least three voting processors running a voting algorithm are connected to a local area network (LAN) and exchange their individually determined results of a process application. Each result is committed to an interface module where it is checked, authenticated and buffered. The allotted time for receiving and buffering committed results is constrained by a first timed interval within the interface module. The first timed interval may be reset several times. The allotted time for checking and comparing the committed results from each processor is constrained by a second timed interval within each voting processor. A majority vote of those authenticated committed results is formed once all necessary iterations of the both the first and second timed intervals are completed. Enhanced security is thereby afforded to the overall voting process and yields a majority vote that is correct despite the introduction of errors associated with faulty or hostile processors.