Protocol for Protecting Third Party Cryptographic Keys
AssigneeMicrosoft Corporation
InventorsDennis N Bromley, Sumedh N Barde, Quintin S Burns
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A protocol is provided that permits a third-party key issuing entity to have its issued keys protected by an unrelated key protecting entity. In at least some embodiments, a trusted key protecting entity is injected, in a sense, in a conversation between the third-party key issuing entity and a client to which one or more keys are distributed. The trusted key protecting entity is able to apply various protections which, in at least some embodiments are unknown to the key issuing entity, to a distributed key which can then be used by the client to access protected content.
Claims20
A computer-implemented method comprising:
- receiving, with a key protecting entity, a content key that has been protected by a key issuing entity, the key issuing entity being unrelated to the key protecting entity;
- unprotecting the protected content key;
- applying protections to the content key to provide a protected content key;
- and
- sending the protected content key to a client.
A system comprising:
- one or more computer-readable storage media;
- computer-readable instructions on the one or more computer-readable storage media which, when executed, implement a method comprising:
- receiving, with a key protecting entity and via the Internet, an encrypted domain private key, the encrypted domain private key comprising part of a domain key pair;
- decrypting the encrypted domain private key;
- applying protections to the decrypted domain private key to provide a protected domain private key;
- and
- encrypting the protected domain private key to provide an encrypted, protected domain private key, said encrypting using a public key associated with a client that is to receive the encrypted, protected domain private key.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.