Patent ID: 9455992
Filing Date: 2016-09-27
CPC Classification: H04L

Claim Text:
1. A method comprising: receiving, by a hardware component and from a first computing device, a representation of a message, the message to be sent to a second computing device, the first computing device and the second computing device participating in a byzantine fault-tolerant protocol; incrementing, by the hardware component, a monotonically non-decreasing counter from a first value to a second value that is greater than or equal to the first value based at least in part on receiving the representation of the message; assigning the monotonically non-decreasing counter to a particular conversation between the first computing device and a second computing device, the particular conversation including the message; binding, by the hardware component, the message to the second value of the monotonically non-decreasing counter; creating, by the hardware component, a statement that includes the monotonically non-decreasing counter and includes the representation of the message, the statement attesting: signing, by the hardware component, the statement with a cryptographic key to create a signed statement; sending the signed statement to the first computing device; and storing the signed statement in a recent attestation queue used to store a predetermined number of most-recently signed statements, each of the most-recently signed statements attesting to a particular increment of the monotonically non-decreasing counter by the hardware component.