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:
Sep. 28, 2004
Filed:
Sep. 24, 1999
John A. Bull, Great Brington, GB;
David J. Otway, Cambridge, GB;
Citrix Systems, Inc., Fort Lauderdale, FL (US);
Abstract
Described are a system and method for securely distributing session keys over a network to each node in a chain of computer system nodes. The chain of nodes recursively constructs and presents a nested request to the authentication server. The nested request includes a request from each of the nodes in the chain requiring a session key to communicate with a neighboring node. The authentication server recursively unravels the request and recursively prepares a response that includes a session key for each node that submitted a request. The response traverses the chain of nodes in the reverse order taken by the nested request to reach the authentication server. Each node receiving the response extracts the portion of the response directed to that node, and forwards the remainder of the response, if any, to the next node in the chain. Thus, with a single traversal of the chain of nodes each node receives at least one session key. The forward and reverse protocols easily generalize for any number of nodes in the chain. The protocols can employ one-way hash functions to seal requests and responses and to encode session keys.