Electrical computers and digital processing systems: support – Multiple computer communication using cryptography – Protection at a particular protocol layer
Reexamination Certificate
1999-03-29
2002-05-21
Courtenay, III, St. John (Department: 2151)
Electrical computers and digital processing systems: support
Multiple computer communication using cryptography
Protection at a particular protocol layer
C709S203000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06393569
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The invention relates generally to a reciprocal client-server network system and, more particularly, to a secured system and method for obtaining application services (i.e., embedded services/applications) from a server and for delivering such services to the requesting client/desktop device, where the service's application logic (high-level presentation, business and database logic) is independent from the client's low-level operating system and I/O peripheral devices and where client device has means to restrict access to its resources.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
As we are looking forward to year 2000 and beyond, a question arises. How will computing look in the future? The trends we have seen are obvious; more powerful chips are being released every few months, while software development struggles to keep up with the hardware but never does. Of course, we now have a slightly new twist, i.e. the new found popularity of Internet, the web, and JAVA® code (developed by SUN®). For instance, with respect to the web, typically a server downloads code (e.g. graphics, JAVA applets) to a general purpose computer, and the computer's browser software interprets the codes for display. However, interpreting and downloading the code takes significant time.
Some have said that JAVA (being platform independent) has finally brought a tool to the computer market to break the major chip and operating system (OS) dominance which have developed in the desktop industry, via INTEL® and MICROSOFT®, respectively. However, different software vendors are creating their own JAVA extensions, such that JAVA is losing its portability. For example, MICROSOFT has developed its own JAVA dialect/interpreter, MS J ++® with extensions specific to the MICROSOFT web browser EXPLORER® and other related MICROSOFT technology, such as ACTIVE-X®.
Further, we have seen neither INTEL nor MICROSOFT despair about web development, i.e., they do not see the currently available Internet technologies as able to threaten their respective monopolies, as “Intel Inside” will continue to power general purpose PCs and MICROSOFT's OSs will continue to manage them, while its MICROSOFT web-browser EXPLORER® now supports JAVA code. Further, MICROSOFT's proprietary ACTIVE-X or Active Server Pages (ASP) technology is a JAVA competitor which may yet derail the industry's effort to use open standards. Accordingly, INTEL's and MICROSOFT's dominance remains the same.
It has been predicted that computing, especially network computing, will change so drastically in the near future that no company/vendor would be able to dominate any market but the current efforts by many software vendors to “extend” the JAVA standards is putting that prediction in doubt. As JAVA applets get developed, incorporating non-standard extensions will eventually cause the emergence of another yet another dominant JAVA applet supplier. At this point, there is little doubt it is going to be the current software giant MICROSOFT. By modifying its proprietary operating systems, like Windows 95/98/2000 and Windows NT to more effectively process either JAVA applets with proprietary extensions or ACTIVE-X objects, or even introducing a completely new Java-like language MICROSOFT once again will dominate software application development by divide and conquer approach.
General purpose computing on the desktop, i.e., desktops having a standard OS (such as Windows 98/95®) and a microprocessor (such as the Pentium® chip), has to be replaced by a system which is less expensive to own and maintain but at the same time does not short-change the user by taking away features which we all have come to expect from our PCs, such as flexibility, extendibility, high-security, ease-of-use, and reasonable cost of initial ownership to enable the software and hardware industry to proceed forward in new and creative ways.
Foreseeable disadvantages of the standard general purpose PC or Network Computers (NC), with respect to the networks and JAVA, include the following. JAVA applications will increase in complexity, therefore requiring faster processors and greater memory in the desktop unit to run them (the same problem which PCs have always had) again forcing the user into a never-ending spiral of hardware and software upgrades. Currently, JAVA applets are four to five times slower than compiled code, requiring more powerful processors to get similar performance as compared to an application that runs native binary code. Further, converting applications from another high-level language to JAVA (or even from C ++) is a very expensive, labor-intensive effort, so that it is no wonder that legacy COBOL applications are still often used in business instead of being rewritten in another language. If it is taking billions and billions of dollars to fix a small Y2K problem it would take trillions of dollars to rewrite the huge number of existing applications in some Java-like language and even more to upgrade all the hardware.
It is also a concern that the computer's writable resources, e.g. a hard drive, can be compromised or damaged by rogue JAVA applets or your computer resources can be used in many insecure and unauthorized ways. On the other hand, if the computer has no writable resources, then the user typically keeps his or her files in remote locations, e.g. on a remote file server, thereby making the user's data files a security risk which no company can afford. An example of a computer having no writable resources is the proposed Network Computer “NC” (a joint effort by APPLE®, NETSCAPE®, IBM®, ORACLE® and SUN®). Although some effort has been made to add digital certificates to Java applets, the companies issuing those certificates are NOT willing to accept any legal responsibility for fraud and do not have the resources to verify if they issue certificates to the right person or company. Therefore the potential for impersonation, fraud and loss of business data to damage or copying is enormous with Java, Active-X or other Java-like approaches.
A typical network system having server-client architecture, which can be utilized in the present invention, would include a network having at least one server connected to at least one client over a shared transmission medium. The network is applicable to supporting the transmission of data on a local area network (LAN) or on a wide area network (WAN).
A typical server, which can be utilized in the present invention, may vary substantially in its architecture. It may be a uni- or multi-processor machine, a PC or a mainframe, a workstation from a major manufacturer or a proprietary technology based computer, etc. It may even be a special function device without any OS or software. The server should be able, however, to function in a predefined way or to run whatever software that the company which owns the server needs to run on it. It should also be able to comply with standard transport protocol, such as tcp/ip used by the Internet or other transport protocols used on wireless or wired LANs.
The server used in the present invention may have its own file system for storing service-related files and data or server may strictly be a computational server whose software is loaded from the file system of another server, i.e., a file server or file system of super-client (neither shown), which is preferable for security reasons. If the server loads its software from a super-client or a file server then the server needs to run a program/application loader which can accept application code from some pre-determined port and load it into memory for execution. A security protocol and loading protocol would need to be established between a super-client and the server to insure that the super-client is authorized to load software applications into the server. If the computational server runs the booted programs solely from RAM, then it would not have access to its local file system after the software is loaded into its main memory (RAM).
There are three basic conven
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