System and method for verifying delivery and integrity of electronic messages
DC CAFCFirst Claim
1. A method of transmitting a message from a sender to a recipient through a server acting as a Mail Transport Agent, including the steps at the server of:
- transmitting the message to the recipient'"'"'s Mail Transport Agent in a protocol dialog selected from a group consisting of the selected one of the SMTP and ESMTP protocols; and
recording at the server some portion of the selected one of the SMTP and ESMTP protocol dialog between the server and the recipient through the server including those portions of the selected one of the SMTP and ESMTP protocol dialog between the server and the recipient in which the receiving Mail Transport Agent accepts or declines delivery of the transmitted message.
2 Assignments
Litigations
1 Petition
Accused Products
Abstract
A server transmits a message from a sender to a destination address. During transmission, the server and the destination address have a dialog constituting an attachment, via a particular one of SMTP and ESMTP protocols, concerning the message, the server and the destination address. The message passes through servers between the server and the destination address. This passage is included in the attachment. Verifiers are provided for the message and for the attachments. The verifiers may constitute encrypted hashes of the message and of the attachment. The sender receives the message, the attachments and the verifications from the server before authentication and transmits the message, the attachments and the verifiers to the server to obtain authentication by the server. The server operates on the message and the message verifier to authenticate the message and operates on the attachments and the attachments'"'"' verifier to verify the attachments.
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Citations
11 Claims
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1. A method of transmitting a message from a sender to a recipient through a server acting as a Mail Transport Agent, including the steps at the server of:
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transmitting the message to the recipient'"'"'s Mail Transport Agent in a protocol dialog selected from a group consisting of the selected one of the SMTP and ESMTP protocols; and recording at the server some portion of the selected one of the SMTP and ESMTP protocol dialog between the server and the recipient through the server including those portions of the selected one of the SMTP and ESMTP protocol dialog between the server and the recipient in which the receiving Mail Transport Agent accepts or declines delivery of the transmitted message. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
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10. A method of transmitting a message and an attachment to the message from a sender to a recipient through a server acting as a Mail Transport Agent, including the steps at the server of:
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transmitting the message to the recipient'"'"'s Mail Transport Agent in a protocol dialog selected from a group consisting of the selected one of the SMTP and ESMTP protocols; and recording at the server some portion of the selected one of the SMTP and ESMTP protocol dialog between the server and the recipient through the server including those portions of the selected one of the SMTP and ESMTP protocol dialog between the server and the recipient in which the receiving Mail Transport Agent accepts or declines delivery of the transmitted message; calculating a digital digest of the attachment, encrypting the digital digest of the attachment with an encryption key known only to a signer of the digital digest, writing the encrypted digital digest of the attachment to a file which is attached to the message and, transmitting the message and the file to a recipient. - View Dependent Claims (11)
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Specification