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Peer-to-peer contact exchange

  • US 8,086,842 B2
  • Filed: 04/21/2006
  • Issued: 12/27/2011
  • Est. Priority Date: 04/21/2006
  • Status: Expired due to Fees
First Claim
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1. A method of using a publicly available index store for a secure publication system, the method comprising:

  • configuring a first computing device to be a publisher of contact information corresponding to the publisher, wherein;

    the contact information is required to be known by both the publisher and another node to enable an initial establishment of a secure connection between the another node and the publisher, and the contact information targeted for retrieval by only a user of the contact information;

    the first computing device includes a first memory, a first processing unit, and first computer-executable instructions stored in the first memory and executable by the first processing unit to publish the contact information;

    at the publisher;

    providing a first cryptographically unique identifier that is statistically unique to a public key of the publisher;

    obtaining a second cryptographically unique identifier that is statistically unique to a public key of the user of the contact information;

    appending the second cryptographically unique identifier to the first cryptographically unique identifier to form a combination key;

    creating a publisher signature by signing the contact information with a publisher private key;

    creating a single record corresponding to the contact information, wherein the single record includes and is indexed by the combination key, and wherein the single record includes the publisher public key, the publisher signature, and all of the contact information corresponding to the publisher; and

    inserting the record into a publicly available index store;

    configuring a second computing device to be the user of the contact information, the second computing device including a second memory, a second processing unit, and second computer-executable instructions stored in the second memory and executable by the second processing unit to use the contact information to establish a secure connection with the publisher; and

    at the user;

    obtaining the first cryptographically unique identifier;

    retrieving the single record from the publicly available index store based on the combination key;

    determining whether the first cryptographically unique identifier relates to the publisher public key included in the single record;

    determining whether the contact information is signed by a private key corresponding to the publisher public key included in the single record;

    establishing the secure connection with the publisher using at least a portion of the single record upon determining the first cryptographically unique identifier relates to the publisher public key included in the single record and the contact information is signed by the private key corresponding to the publisher public key included in the single record; and

    refusing to establish the secure connection with the publisher upon determining the first cryptographically unique identifier does not relate to the publisher public key included in the single record or the contact information is not signed by the private key corresponding to the publisher public key included in the single record,wherein the publisher and the user are different nodes in a peer-to-peer network.

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