Distributive computation of a digital signature

摘要

A method and apparatus are presented to perform a distributive computation of a digital signature in a document signing process. A signing request from a remote device initiates the document signing process including the distributive computation. The server verifies digital certificates corresponding to a signer's public key. An encryption request including a set of authenticated attributes and a hash value based on the to-be-signed content is transmitted to the remote device. A signer at the remote device encrypts the hash value in the encryption request with an encryption process utilizing a private key. The resulting encrypted hash value is transmitted to the server to produce the digital signature used to sign the subject content. This distributive computation process minimizes the amount of data transmitted between devices, while minimizing remote device resource requirements, and maintains the integrity of the signer's private key during generation of the digital signature.

主权项

1. A method comprising:
receiving an encrypted hash at a server communicatively coupled to a computer network, the encrypted hash being transmitted from a device over the computer network; combining the encrypted hash with a set of verified certificates to produce a digital signature, wherein the set of verified certificates are certificates that include at least one certificate based on a public key, and wherein the set of certificates are well-formed, valid, correctly signed, and trustworthy; and applying the digital signature to a content to produce a signed content, the content determined by a content identifier included in a signing request.