CONTEST
Competed
$20,000
This contest is closed.
Problem
Patexia seeks prior art for a patent that allegedly describes an encryption system for a wireless device that utilizes a semi-random encryption key and an integrity checksum to ensure that a transmission is correctly received and decrypted.
The system allegedly accomplishes this encryption system with three inputs:
- a seed that incorporates a secret key, the device’s address, and the device’s media access controller (MAC) layer sequence number as a changing reference number
- a random initialization vector
- the plaintext to be transmitted
The system then uses these inputs to generate two calculated values:
- an encryption key based on the seed and random initialization vector
- an integrity checksum value based on the plaintext
The system finally uses these inputs and calculated values to:
- create the ciphertext to be transmitted from the plaintext and integrity checksum
- transmit the encrypted message including the ciphertext and the random initialization vector
Figure. An overview of the encryption mechanism
Questions
| # | Question | Value |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Was the reference filed or published before May 10th, 2002? | T/F |
| 2 | Does the reference describe a wireless device that uses encryptions on its transmissions? | 5 |
| 3 | Can the wireless device associate with the media access controller (MAC) layer of the network it is connected to? | 10 |
| 4 | Does the wireless device generate a seed to be one part of its encryption key using a one-way algorithm using a secret key, its address, and its MAC layer sequence number as a changing reference number? | 15 |
| 5 | Does the wireless device generate a random initialization vector to be the second part of its encryption key? | 15 |
| 6 | Does the wireless device generate an encryption key using the seed and the random initialization vector? | 15 |
| 7 | Does the wireless device generate an integrity checksum based upon the plaintext of the message to be transmitted? | 15 |
| 8 | Does the wireless device generate the ciphertext using the encryption key to encrypt the plaintext and the integrity checksum? | 15 |
| 9 | Does the wireless device send the encrypted message with the ciphertext and the random initialization vector? | 10 |
Additional Notes
This is a Prior Art Search contest aimed at determining if a patent idea was known and publicly available before a patent was filed.
This contest will close on Sunday, August 31st, 2014 at 11:59 PM PST.
This contest is subject to modified prize distribution awards:
- the top 2 submissions will be designated as a winner and receive $5,000 each
- the next scored 2 submissions will be designated as winners and receive receive $2,500 each
- the next scored submissions (to a maximum of 10) will be designated as runner-ups and receive a minimum of $500 each
Please review the Contest Rules. For more information on how to submit to this Contest type, please read the Intro to Prior Art Search page.
Please review the full list of known references.
