Secure voice conferencing apparatus

• US 5,500,899 A
• Filed: 05/20/1982
• Issued: 03/19/1996
• Est. Priority Date: 05/20/1982
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: The United States of America As Represented By The Director National Security Agency
• Original Assignee: The United States of America As Represented By The Secretary of Agriculture
• Inventors: Snow, Brian D.
• Primary Examiner(s): Cangialosi, Salvatore
• Application Number:
  US06/382,270
• Time in Patent Office: 5,052 Days
• Field of Search: 178/22.13-22.16, 178/22.19, 380/47, 380/49
• US Class Current: 380/47
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2209/125 Parallelization or pipelining, e.g. for accelerating processing of cryptographic operations
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/065 Encryption by serially and continuously modifying data stream elements, e.g. stream cipher systems, RC4, SEAL or A5/3

Abstract

A system for communicating simultaneous encrypted messages in a jamming eronment with a low opportunity for depth exploitation. The system includes a plurality of transmitters, each having a high speed key generator for producing a plurality of pseudorandom bit streams. The bit streams are combined with a unique identifier in each transmitter to produce a single unique key stream, which may be added to a binary data stream to create an encrypted message for transmission. The receiver includes a single key generator identical to those in the transmitters and a plurality of combiners and correlators to enable simultaneous recovery of each transmitted encrypted message.

Claims

1. In a secure digital conferencing communications apparatus wherein each of a plurality of messages is encoded with a distinct key and then combined for simultaneous communication over a common channel,

(a) a plurality of transmitters, each comprising:

means for generating a common, synchronous first key stream;

means for providing a unique identifier;

means for mixing said unique identifier with said first key stream to provide a first unique key steam;

means for providing a first data stream, and

means for mixing said unique key stream with said data stream to produce a unique encrypted stream,

(b) transmission means for combining a plurality of said encrypted streams and for communicating them simultaneously over a common channel, and

(c) a plurality of receivers, each comprising;

means for receiving said combined encrypted streams;

means for generating a common second key stream identical to and in synchronism with said first key stream;

means for providing all of said unique identifiers;

means for mixing each of said unique identifiers with said second key stream to provide a plurality of second unique key streams, each identical to each of said first unique key streams, and

means for correlating each of said second unique key streams with said combined encrypted stream to provide a plurality of second data streams, each identical to each of said first data streams.

2. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein said means for mixing said unique identifier includes shift register means for segmenting said first key stream into a plurality of substreams.

3. The apparatus of claim 2 wherein said means for providing said unique identifiers are shift registers.

4. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein said means for mixing said unique identifier and said first key stream in said transmitter includes a plurality of 2-input AND gates, each AND gate receiving a first input from a single stage of the shift register containing said identifier and a second input from a single stage of the shift register comprising said segmenting means, and an adder to sum the outputs of the AND gates.

5. The apparatus of claim 4 wherein said means for mixing said unique key stream in said transmitters with said data stream is an adder.

6. The apparatus of claim 5 wherein said transmitter further comprises:

means for providing a common identifier;

means for mixing said common identifier with said first key stream to provide a common key stream, and

means for mixing said common key stream with said first identifier to produce an encrypted identifier, and

wherein said receiver further comprises;

means for receiving an encrypted identifier, and

means for correlating said plurality of second unique key streams with said encrypted identifier to provide an identifier identical to said common identifier.