METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR INCREMENTAL CODE SIGNING

摘要

The present invention discloses a method for quickly and easily authenticating large computer program (300). The system operates by first sealing the computer program with digital signature (350) in an incremental manner. Specifically, the computer program is divided into a set of pages (380) and a hash value (310) is calculated for each page (390). The set of hash values (390) is formed into a hash value array (373) and then the hash value array is then sealed with a digital signature (350). The computer program (300) is then distributed along with the hash value array (373) and the digital signature (350). To authenticate the computer program (300), a recipient first verifies the authenticity of the hash value array (373) with the digital signature (350) and a public key. Once the hash value array (373) has been authenticated, the recipient can then verify the authenticity of each page (380) of the computer program (300) by calculating a hash of a page (380) to be loaded and then comparing with an associated hash value (390) in the authenticated hash value array (373). If the hash values do not match, then execution may be halted.