| 20090307490 | ELECTRONIC DATA COMMUNICATION SYSTEM - There is described an electronic data communication system in which encrypted mail messages for a recipient are sent in two parts: message data encrypted by a symmetric encryption algorithm using a session key and session key data encrypted by an asymmetric encryption algorithm using a public key associated with the recipient. If the recipient uses a webmail service to access the encrypted electronic mail message, the encrypted session key data is sent to a trusted third party server which has access to the private key of the user. The trusted third party server decrypts the encrypted session key using the private key of the user, and then sends the decrypted session key to a remote network device for decryption of the encrypted message. In this way, although the trusted third party has access to the private key of the user, the trusted third party does not have access to any decrypted message. In another aspect, in order to digitally sign a message, the sender applies a hash function to the message to generate a hash value, and then sends the hash value to the trusted third party server where it is encrypted using the private key associated with the sender in order to generate the digital signature, which is then returned to the sender. | 12-10-2009 |
