System and method for secure storage, transfer and retrieval of content addressable information

摘要

An algorithm (such as the MD5 hash function) (104) is applied to a file (102) to produce an intrinsic unique identifier (IUI) (106) for the file (or message digest). The file is encrypted using its IUI as the key (106) for the encryption algorithm. An algorithm (112) is then applied to the encrypted file (110) to produce an IUI (114) for the encrypted file. The encrypted file is safely stored or transferred within a network and is uniquely identifiable by its IUI. The encrypted file is decrypted using the IUI of the plaintext file as the key. The IUI serves as both a key to decrypt the file and also as verification that the integrity of the plaintext file has not been compromised. IUIs for any number of such encrypted files may be assembled into a descriptor file (130) that includes meta data (134) for each file, the IUI (106) of the plaintext file and the IUI (114) of the encrypted file. An algorithm (136) is applied to the descriptor file to produce an IUI (138) for the descriptor file. The plaintext descriptor file is then encrypted using the descriptor file IUI as a key for the encryption algorithm. An algorithm (144) is applied to the encrypted descriptor file (142) to produce an IUI (146) for the encrypted descriptor file. The IUI of the encrypted descriptor file is a location-independent identifier to locate the encrypted descriptor file. A flattened descriptor file (460) includes the IUIs (416, 422, 432) of encrypted data files and the IUI (456) of the encrypted descriptor file. An algorithm (462) is applied to the flattened descriptor file to produce its own IUI (464).