Secure messaging systems
First Claim
1. A messaging system in which messages are sent and acknowledged, the system comprising a plurality of terminals and means for interconnecting said terminals, each terminal including:
- means for sending a message to another terminal;
means for storing any messages which have been sent to another terminal;
means for detecting any stored message upon receipt of an acknowledgment of said message from the terminal to which the message was sent; and
means for bundling a new message with any stored messages,whereby when it is desired to send a new message from a first terminal to a second terminal the new message is bundled with any other messages which were previously sent from the first terminal to the second terminal but no acknowledgment of which was received by the first terminal and the bundle is thereupon sent from the first terminal to the second terminal.
1 Assignment
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Accused Products
Abstract
A secure messaging system with several terminals and many system (control) messages transmitted between the various terminals. These messages can deliberate, accidentally change sequence, or be deleted or duplicated. To protect the system against this, an acknowledgement is sent for every message received (except a simple acknowledgement), and each station stores copies of the messages it has sent, deleting them only when acknowledged. When a new message is to be sent or a non-receipt of acknowledgement time-out occurs, a packet is sent with all previous messages in store prefixed to the new message, so the receiving station cannot act on the new message before receiving and acting on the previous messages. There are known means for ignoring duplicated messages. Preferably there is chained serial authentication of the messages in the packet so that even if one is garbled, they can be acted on up to that point. For security and other reasons, user messages are in general not treated similarly but sent only once; with these, error control is a user responsibility.
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Citations
20 Claims
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1. A messaging system in which messages are sent and acknowledged, the system comprising a plurality of terminals and means for interconnecting said terminals, each terminal including:
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means for sending a message to another terminal; means for storing any messages which have been sent to another terminal; means for detecting any stored message upon receipt of an acknowledgment of said message from the terminal to which the message was sent; and means for bundling a new message with any stored messages, whereby when it is desired to send a new message from a first terminal to a second terminal the new message is bundled with any other messages which were previously sent from the first terminal to the second terminal but no acknowledgment of which was received by the first terminal and the bundle is thereupon sent from the first terminal to the second terminal. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
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10. A method of sending messages from a first terminal to a second terminal, the method comprising:
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storing in the first terminal any messages which have been sent to the second terminal; deleting any stored message upon receipt of an acknowledgment of said message from the second terminal; bundling a new message to be sent to the second terminal with any stored messages; and sending the bundle to the second terminal, whereby the new message is sent together with any other messages which were previously sent from the first terminal to the second terminal but no acknowledgment of which was received by the first terminal. - View Dependent Claims (11, 12, 13, 14)
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15. A method of sending messages from a first terminal to a second terminal, the method comprising:
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identifying any message to be sent as a user message or a system message; storing in the first terminal any system messages which have been sent to the second terminal; deleting any stored message upon receipt of an acknowledgment of said message form the second terminal; bundling a new system message to be sent to the second terminal with any stored messages; and sending the bundle to the second terminal, whereby the new message is sent together with any other system messages which were previously sent from the first terminal to the second terminal but no acknowledgment of which was received by the first terminal. - View Dependent Claims (16, 17, 18, 19, 20)
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Specification