Trustworthy timestamps and certifiable clocks using logs linked by cryptographic hashes
AssigneeRicoh Company, Ltd.
InventorsStephen Savitzky, Kurt Piersol
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method and apparatus for creating and/or using trustworthy timestamps and certifiable clocks using logs linked by cryptographic hashes. In one embodiment, the method comprises maintaining a first, chained-hash log; associating a first clock with the chained-hash log, and entangling the first log; with a second by adding a time-stamped synchronization entry to the chained-hash log, where the synchronization entry has a second time indication associated with the second log and a hash of one or more entries in the first log.
Claims17
A method, comprising:
- maintaining, by a device that logs event times and document hashes, a first event log that is associated with a first clock;
- entangling the first event log with a second event log maintained by another device;
- tracing the entangling of the first event log with the second event log;
- and
- annotating an entry in the first event log with a correction to a previously-issued timestamp in the entry based on results of tracing the entanglement, wherein an annotation of the entry in the first log is a new log entry in the first log that comprises a hash and a timestamp of the entry being annotated.
A non-transitory computer readable storage medium including instructions that, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to perform a method comprising:
- maintaining, by a device that logs event times and document hashes, a first event log that is associated with a first clock;
- entangling the first event log with a second event log maintained by another device;
- tracing the entangling of the first event log with the second event log;
- and
- annotating an entry in the first event log with a correction to a previously-issued timestamp in the entry based on results of tracing the entanglement, wherein an annotation of the entry in the first log is a new log entry in the first log that comprises a hash and a timestamp of the entry being annotated.
A system comprising:
- a memory to store a first event log with log entries that comprise event times and document hashes;
- and
- a processor to
- maintain the first event log that is associated with a first clock,
- entangle the first event log with a second event log maintained by another device,
- trace the entangling of the first event log with the second event log, and
- annotate an entry in the first event log with a correction to a previously-issued timestamp in the entry based on results of tracing the entanglement, wherein an annotation of the entry in the first log is a new log entry in the first log that comprises a hash and a timestamp of the entry being annotated.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.