Secure distributed item-level discovery service using secret sharing

#The field of invention relates generally to electronic data processing and more particularly to a discovery service.

#Search and discovery are critical and integral parts in the today's business information processing. A discovery services (DS) is needed to facilitate finding of information resources in a computer network for particular problems, questions, or even items. Examples of general purpose DS providers are Domain Name System (DNS) service and various Internet search engines. However, there are DS providers aimed to satisfy more specific needs. For example, in a supply chain, a DS would provide references to data for given products or vendors.

#Typically, DSs supply references to information resources in a computer network in response to search requests. The search requests contain identification information associated with the required information resources. In the era of globalized economy, DS are especially needed in the public networks, e.g. the Internet. An entity, who wants to avail information resources to third parties, must entrust a DS provider with the respective discovery information, comprising identification information and corresponding references to information resources. Accordingly, the DS provider publishes this information in the public network.

#A better understanding of the present invention can be obtained from the following detailed description in conjunction with the figures of the accompanying drawings in which like references indicate similar elements. It should be noted that references to “an” or “one” embodiment in this disclosure are not necessarily to the same embodiment, and such references mean at least one.

#FIG. 1 illustrates a flowchart of a process to publish a plurality of shares of a plurality of URL references to a plurality of target nodes in a P2P ring, according to one embodiment of the invention.

#FIG. 2A illustrates a flowchart of a first part of a process to publish a plurality of shares of a plurality of URL references to a plurality of target nodes through a plurality of first proxy nodes and a plurality of second proxy nodes in a P2P ring, according to one embodiment of the invention.

#Embodiments of a method and a system for providing secure distributed item-level discovery service using secret sharing are described herein.

#A provider of secure discovery services (DSs) in a global computer network publishes a set of uniform resource locators (URLs) that refer to a plurality of network resources, entrusted by a plurality of entities. Further, the provider of secure DSs delivers one or more URLs in response to requests of authorized third parties. According to one embodiment of the invention, each entrusted URL is split in a plurality of shares by applying secret sharing algorithm. Such an algorithm ensures that no part of the URL could be read or decoded without combining all shares. An example for secret share algorithm is Shamir secret sharing. Each share of an URL is published on a different node of the global computer network. This helps to avoid theft of valuable information from a single node, and enhances the scalability and performance. The DS is further secured against revealing any additional or contextual, data that could infer sensitive business information, by applying a P2P routing protocol amongst a plurality of nodes of the global network.

#The P2P routing protocol services a plurality of nodes organized in a P2P based network. A P2P based network includes a number of equal peer nodes that simultaneously function as both “clients” and “servers” to each other. In a P2P based network, information or information requests are transferred from a source node to a destination node by passing it amongst a plurality of peer nodes. The destination node receives information or information requests from a peer node and is not aware for the exact P2P route and for the original source node. The exact P2P route of the data transfer depends on the type of the P2P based network.