Abstract: A method, apparatus and system is provided for an entity to facilitate secure communication between a client and server even when they do not support the same set of protocols without violating the trust model which requires that only the client and server be privy to the contents of the communication. In an embodiment this is accomplished by embedding at the site of the proxy an application running inside a secure coprocessor which translates between the protocols that the client supports and those that the server understands. The invention is also useful for purposes such as adaptation of content at the site of the proxy without violating the trust model between the client and the proxy. In general, the scheme describes mechanisms to securely delegate to the infrastructure the ability to enforce an arbitrary trust model between a set of clients and servers participating in some computational task.

Abstract: A smart card, (a type of credit card containing storage capacity and processing ability preferably in the form of a microprocessor), is used to store an electronic ticket provided from the service provider's computer system to the customer's computer over an insecure communications line. Upon the request for a ticket from the customer's computer, the service provider's system transmits a ticket loading request token TLR to the customer's computer to be loaded into a smart card of the customer. The smart card responds to the ticket loading request token TLR by producing a ticket loading token TL containing a hash of the ticket loading request token TLR; the smart card's identifier TID; a secret number GC and ticket loading token TL′ from the previous transaction of the smart card. The hash signal is attached to the ticket loading token TL′ from the previous transaction and shipped back to the ticket provider.