PHYSICAL ACCESS CONTROL

摘要

A system and method are disclosed for controlling physical access through a digital certificate validation process that works with standard certificate formats and that enables a certifying authority (CA) to prove the validity status of each certificate C at any time interval (e.g., every day, hour, or minute) starting with C's issue date, D1. C's time granularity may be specified within the certificate itself, unless it is the same for all certificates. For example, all certificates may have a one-day granularity with each certificate expires 365 days after issuance. Given certain initial inputs provided by the CA, a one-way hash function is utilized to compute values of a specified byte size that are included on the digital certificate and to compute other values that are kept secret and used in the validation process.

主权项

1. A method to for an entity A to control the access of at least one user U to at least one disconnected door D having means to determine the current time, comprising the steps of:
for each time interval d of a sequence of dates, having A produce a digital signature SIGUDd, indicating that user U can access door D during time interval d; causing U to receive SIGUDd during time interval d for presentation to door D in order to pass through D; having U present SIGUDd to door D; and having D open after verifying that (i) SIGUDd indeed is a digital signature of A indicating that U can access door D at time interval d, and (ii) that the current time is indeed within time interval d.