Abstract:
Systems and methods for processing encoded messages within a wireless communications system are disclosed. A server within the wireless communications system determines whether the size of an encoded message is too large for a wireless communications device. If the message is too large, the server removes part of the message and sends an abbreviated message to the wireless device, together with additional information relating to processing of the encoded message, such as, for example, hash context values, that assist the wireless communications device in verifying the abbreviated message.

Description:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION  
       [0001]     1. Field of the Invention  
         [0002]     The present invention relates generally to an electronic messaging system that is capable of processing encoded messages and information. In particular, the disclosure is directed to a system in which an electronic message server performs at least a portion of the verification functions typically performed by a mobile wireless communications device having secure electronic messaging capability, especially where an encoded message is too large for verification on the mobile wireless communications device.  
         [0003]     2. Related Art  
         [0004]     Exchanging cryptographically encoded secure electronic messages and data, such as, for example, e-mail messages, is well known. In many known electronic message exchange schemes, signatures, encryption or both are commonly used to ensure the integrity and confidentiality of information being exchanged between a sender and a recipient of the electronic messages. In an e-mail system, for example, the sender of an e-mail message may either sign the message, encrypt the message or both sign and encrypt the message. These actions may be performed using well-known standards, such as, for example, Secure Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME), Pretty Good Privacy™ (PGP™), OpenPGP, and numerous other secure e-mail standards.  
         [0005]     In general, secure e-mail messages are relatively large. For example, S/MIME can increase the size of an e-mail message by a factor of ten or more in some situations. This size augmentation presents difficulties, especially in devices that have a limit on the size of a message that can be processed, such as, for example, a mobile wireless communications device. Such a device may also experience difficulty handling a message wherein only a portion of the message has been transferred to the device because of the above-mentioned size limitations.  
         [0006]     For example, if a message is larger than the size limit of the device, then the entire message will never reach the device. If this large message is a signed or encoded message, then all the data required to verify the signature may not be sent to the device, and thus, the device may not be able to verify the signature.  
       BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION  
       [0007]     In view of the foregoing, we have now identified an efficient and easy to implement system and method for verifying secure electronic messages, wherein some of the processing overhead associated with decoding and/or verifying secure messages is distributed from a device having a size limit, such as, for example, a mobile wireless communications device, to a device having the ability to process much larger size messages, such as, for example, a server within the wireless communications system.  
         [0008]     According to an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure, a server within the wireless communications system has the ability to determine if a secure message is too large to be verified on a size-limited device. The server may make this determination by finding the point in the secure electronic message encoding where the message will be cut off due to the size constraints of the size-limited device. The server determines if the cut off point occurs in such a location that verification of the message will not be possible on the size-limited device, such as, for example, part way through the signed data or in the middle of the signature data. If the message is determined to be too long such that verification on the device is not possible, then the server can attempt to verify the signature on the message.  
         [0009]     According to an exemplary embodiment of the disclosure, the server is operable to assist the size-limited device in verifying the message itself. For example, if a secure (e.g., signed and/or encrypted) message that is too large for the size-limited device is made up of three parts, A, B and C, where B is an attachment, the server may remove the attachment B from the message. Consequently, the attachment B will not be sent to the size-limited device. Because the attachment has been removed from the electronic message, the size-limited device will be unable to verify the signature. In order to assist the size-limited device in verifying the message, the server may apply a hashing function to parts A, B and C, in sequence. After each part has been hashed, the hashing function has a context associated therewith. The size-limited device, of course, only has parts A and C, so when it performs a hash, it will have the same context after hashing part A, but will have the incorrect starting context when it hashes part C. In a preferred embodiment, the hashing function applied to parts A, B and C may be the same as that used in signature generation.  
         [0010]     In this situation, the server can insert the hash context after it hashed part A and the hash context after it hashed part B in place of the attachment B in the original message. Because the hash contexts are much smaller than the application data, the size-limited device should be able to accept this data. Accordingly, after the size-limited device performs its hash of part A, it can compare the hash context obtained from hashing part A with the hash context received from the server when it hashed part A. If these contexts match, the device can then substitute the hash context received from the server after it hashed part B, and the device can then continue to hash part C. This result can then be used to verify the signature.  
         [0011]     In another exemplary embodiment of the disclosure, the server could alternatively insert the result of performing an exclusive OR function (XOR) of the context after hashing part A with the context after hashing part B. The device would then perform a hash of part A, take this context and perform an XOR with the value the server provides. The device then takes the result of that XOR function and uses it as the context after hashing part B. This alternative further reduces the amount of data required to be sent to the size-limited device.  
         [0012]     As a further alternative exemplary embodiment, the server may only verify levels of the message. For example, in S/MIME the actual steps involved in verifying a message involve taking multiple digests and then performing an actual signature verification calculation. In this embodiment, the server may verify that the digests match, but leave the signature verification calculation to the size-limited device.  
         [0013]     The foregoing exemplary embodiments provide a solution to the problem of verifying secured electronic messages by a size-limited device by distributing the processing overhead to a server of the electronic messaging system, thereby enabling the sharing of system resources to assist the size-limited device in verifying secured electronic messages.  
         [0014]     The advantages attendant with the various embodiments of the invention described above are provided by the method and system of automated key management disclosed and described herein with reference to the drawings. 
     
    
     BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS  
       [0015]     These and other objects and advantages of exemplary embodiments of the present invention will be better understood and appreciated in conjunction with the following detailed description of exemplary embodiments taken together with the accompanying drawings, in which:  
         [0016]      FIG. 1  is an overall system wide schematic view of an exemplary wireless e-mail communication system incorporating a mobile wireless communications device with the descriptive error messaging in accordance with an exemplary embodiment of the present invention;  
         [0017]      FIG. 2  is a block diagram of a further exemplary communication system including multiple networks and multiple mobile communication devices;  
         [0018]      FIG. 3  is an illustrative schematic block diagram of an exemplary mobile wireless communications device;  
         [0019]      FIG. 4  is a block diagram depicting components used in handling encoded messages;  
         [0020]      FIG. 5  is an illustrative flow diagram of an exemplary operational scenario for processing encoded messages according to an exemplary embodiment of the invention; and  
         [0021]      FIG. 6  is an illustrative flow diagram of an alternative exemplary operational scenario according to another exemplary embodiment of the present invention. 
     
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF EXEMPLARY EMBODIMENTS  
       [0022]      FIG. 1  is an overview of an example communication system in which a wireless communication device may be used. One skilled in the art will appreciate that there may be hundreds of different topologies, but the system shown in  FIG. 1  helps demonstrate the operation of the encoded message processing systems and methods described in the present application. There may also be many message senders and recipients. The simple system shown in  FIG. 1  is for illustrative purposes only, and shows perhaps the most prevalent Internet e-mail environment where security is not generally used.  
         [0023]      FIG. 1  shows an e-mail sender  10 , the Internet  20 , a message server system  40 , a wireless gateway  85 , wireless infrastructure  90 , a wireless network  105  and a mobile communication device  100 .  
         [0024]     An e-mail sender system  10  may, for example, be connected to an ISP (Internet Service Provider) on which a user of the system  10  has an account, located within a company, possibly connected to a local area network (LAN), and connected to the Internet  20 , or connected to the Internet  20  through a large ASP (application service provider) such as America Online (AOL). Those skilled in the art will appreciate that the systems shown in  FIG. 1  may instead be connected to a wide area network (WAN) other than the Internet, although e-mail transfers are commonly accomplished through Internet-connected arrangements as shown in  FIG. 1 .  
         [0025]     The message server  40  may be implemented, for example, on a network computer within the firewall of a corporation, a computer within an ISP or ASP system or the like, and acts as the main interface for e-mail exchange over the Internet  20 . Although other messaging systems might not require a message server system  40 , a mobile device  100  configured for receiving and possibly sending e-mail will normally be associated with an account on a message server. Perhaps the two most common message servers are Microsoft Exchange™ and Lotus Domino™. These products are often used in conjunction with Internet mail routers that route and deliver mail. These intermediate components are not shown in  FIG. 1 , as they do not directly play a role in the secure message processing described below. Message servers such as server  40  typically extend beyond just e-mail sending and receiving; they also include dynamic database storage engines that have predefined database formats for data like calendars, to-do lists, task lists, e-mail and documentation.  
         [0026]     The wireless gateway  85  and infrastructure  90  provide a link between the Internet  20  and wireless network  105 . The wireless infrastructure  90  determines the most likely network for locating a given user and tracks the user as they roam between countries or networks. A message is then delivered to the mobile device  100  via wireless transmission, typically at a radio frequency (RF), from a base station in the wireless network  105  to the mobile device  100 . The particular network  105  may be virtually any wireless network over which messages may be exchanged with a mobile communication device.  
         [0027]     As shown in  FIG. 1 , a composed e-mail message  15  is sent by the e-mail sender  10 , located somewhere on the Internet  20 . This message  15  is normally fully in the clear and uses traditional Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), RFC822 headers and Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension (MIME) body parts to define the format of the mail message. These techniques are all well known to those skilled in the art. The message  15  arrives at the message server  40  and is normally stored in a message store. Most known messaging systems support a so-called “pull” message access scheme, wherein the mobile device  100  must request that stored messages be forwarded by the message server to the mobile device  100 . Some systems provide for automatic routing of such messages which are addressed using a specific e-mail address associated with the mobile device  100 . In a preferred embodiment described in further detail below, messages addressed to a message server account associated with a host system such as a home computer or office computer which belongs to the user of a mobile device  100  are redirected from the message server  40  to the mobile device  100  as they are received.  
         [0028]     Regardless of the specific mechanism controlling the forwarding of messages to the mobile device  100 , the message  15 , or possibly a translated or reformatted version thereof, is sent to the wireless gateway  85 . The wireless infrastructure  90  includes a series of connections to wireless network  105 . These connections could be Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN), Frame Relay or T 1  connections using the TCP/IP protocol used throughout the Internet. As used herein, the term “wireless network” is intended to include at least one of three different types of networks, those being (1) data-centric wireless networks, (2) voice-centric wireless networks and (3) dual-mode networks that can support both voice and data communications over the same physical base stations. Combined dual-mode networks include, but are not limited to, (1) Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) networks, (2) the Groupe Special Mobile or the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) and the General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) networks, and (3) future third-generation (3G) networks like Enhanced Data-rates for Global Evolution (EDGE) and Universal Mobile Telecommunications Systems (UMTS). Some older examples of data-centric network include the Mobitex™ Radio Network and the DataTAC™ Radio Network. Examples of older voice-centric data networks include Personal Communication Systems (PCS) networks like GSM, and TDMA systems.  
         [0029]      FIG. 2  is a block diagram of a further example communication system including multiple networks and multiple mobile communication devices. The system of  FIG. 2  is substantially similar to the  FIG. 1  system, but includes a host system  300 , a redirection program  45 , a mobile device cradle  65 , a wireless virtual private network (VPN) router  75 , an additional wireless network  110  and multiple mobile communication devices  100 . As described above in conjunction with  FIG. 1 ,  FIG. 2  represents an overview of a sample network topology. Although the encoded message processing systems and methods described herein may be applied to networks having many different topologies, the network of  FIG. 2  is useful in understanding an automatic e-mail redirection system mentioned briefly above.  
         [0030]     The central host system  300  will typically be a corporate office or other LAN, but may instead be a home office computer or some other private system where mail messages are being exchanged. Within the host system  300  is the message server  400 , running on some computer within the firewall of the host system, that acts as the main interface for the host system to exchange e-mail with the Internet  20 . In the system of  FIG. 2 , the redirection program  45  enables redirection of data items from the server  400  to a mobile communication device  100 . Although the redirection program  45  is shown to reside on the same machine as the message server  400  for ease of presentation, there is no requirement that it must reside on the message server. The redirection program  45  and the message server  400  are designed to co-operate and interact to allow the pushing of information to mobile devices  100 . In this installation, the redirection program  45  takes confidential and non-confidential corporate information for a specific user and redirects it out through the corporate firewall to mobile devices  100 . A more detailed description of the redirection software  45  may be found in the commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 6,219,694 (“the &#39;694 Patent”), entitled “System and Method for Pushing Information From A Host System To A Mobile Data Communication Device Having A Shared Electronic Address”, and issued to the assignee of the instant application on Apr. 17, 2001 which is hereby incorporated into the present application by reference. This push technique may use a wireless friendly encoding, compression and encryption technique to deliver all information to a mobile device, thus effectively extending the security firewall to include each mobile device  100  associated with the host system  300 .  
         [0031]     As shown in  FIG. 2 , there may be many alternative paths for getting information to the mobile device  100 . One method for loading information onto the mobile device  100  is through a port designated  50 , using a device cradle  65 . This method tends to be useful for bulk information updates often performed at initialization of a mobile device  100  with the host system  300  or a computer  35  within the system  300 . The other main method for data exchange is over-the-air using wireless networks to deliver the information. As shown in  FIG. 2 , this may be accomplished through a wireless VPN router  75  or through a traditional Internet connection  95  to a wireless gateway  85  and a wireless infrastructure  90 , as described above. The concept of a wireless VPN router  75  is new in the wireless industry and implies that a VPN connection could be established directly through a specific wireless network  110  to a mobile device  100 . The possibility of using a wireless VPN router  75  has only recently been available and could be used when the new Internet Protocol (IP) Version 6 (IPV6) arrives into IP-based wireless networks. This new protocol will provide enough IP addresses to dedicate an IP address to every mobile device  100  and thus make it possible to push information to a mobile device  100  at any time. A principal advantage of using this wireless VPN router  75  is that it could be an off-the-shelf VPN component, thus it would not require a separate wireless gateway  85  and wireless infrastructure  90  to be used. A VPN connection would preferably be a Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)/IP or User Datagram Protocol (UDP)/IP connection to deliver the messages directly to the mobile device  100 . If a wireless VPN  75  is not available then a link  95  to the Internet  20  is the most common connection mechanism available and has been described above.  
         [0032]     In the automatic redirection system of  FIG. 2 , a composed e-mail message  15  leaving the e-mail sender  10  arrives at the message server  400  and is redirected by the redirection program  45  to the mobile device  100 . As this redirection takes place the message  15  is re-enveloped, as indicated at  80 , and a possibly proprietary compression and encryption algorithm can then be applied to the original message  15 . In this way, messages being read on the mobile device  100  are no less secure than if they were read on a desktop workstation such as  35  within the firewall. All messages exchanged between the redirection program  45  and the mobile device  100  preferably use this message repackaging technique. Another goal of this outer envelope is to maintain the addressing information of the original message except the sender&#39;s and the receiver&#39;s address. This allows reply messages to reach the appropriate destination, and also allows the “from” field to reflect the mobile user&#39;s desktop address. Using the user&#39;s e-mail address from the mobile device  100  allows the received message to appear as though the message originated from the user&#39;s desktop system  35  rather than the mobile device  100 .  
         [0033]     With reference back to the port  50  and cradle  65  connectivity to the mobile device  100 , this connection path offers many advantages for enabling one-time data exchange of large items. For those skilled in the art of personal digital assistants (PDAs) and synchronization, the most common data exchanged over this link is Personal Information Management (PIM) data  55 . When exchanged for the first time this data tends to be large in quantity, bulky in nature and requires a large bandwidth to get loaded onto the mobile device  100  where it can be used on the road. This serial link may also be used for other purposes, including setting up a private security key  111  such as an S/MIME or PGP specific private key, the Certificate (Cert) of the user and their Certificate Revocation Lists (CRLs)  60 . The private key is preferably exchanged so that the desktop  35  and mobile device  100  share one personality and one method for accessing all mail. The Cert and CRLs are normally exchanged over such a link because they represent a large amount of the data that is required by the device for S/MIME, PGP and other public key security methods.  
         [0034]     As depicted in  FIG. 3 , mobile communications device  100  includes a suitable RF antenna  102  for wireless communication to/from wireless network  20 . Conventional RF, demodulation/modulation and decoding/coding circuits  104  are provided. As those in the art will appreciate, such circuits may involve possibly many digital signal processors (DSPs), microprocessors, filters, analog and digital circuits and the like. However, since such circuitry is well known in the art, it is not further described herein.  
         [0035]     The mobile communications device  100  will also typically include a main control CPU  106  that operates under the control of a stored program in program memory  108 , and which has access to data memory  110 . CPU  106  also communicates with a conventional keyboard  112  and display  114  (for example, a liquid crystal display or LCD) and audio transducer or speaker  116 . A portion of the data memory  310  is available for storing data required for decrypting encrypted messages, such as, for example, private keys, digital certificates, and the like. Suitable computer program executable code is stored in portions of the program memory  108  to constitute stored program logic for receiving and using new or added private keys and/or digital certificates or the like as described below (for example, via a wired serial I/O port or the wireless RF antenna  102 ).  
         [0036]     As depicted in  FIG. 1 , a secure wired synchronization connection  26  (for example, between serial I/O ports of the user&#39;s base unit  24  and the wireless device  100 ) is typically provided for normal data synchronization purposes (for example, to synchronize databases in the two devices with respect to such things as calendars, to-do lists, task lists, address books, etc.). Part of prior data synchronization processes has included a program logic such as Cert Sync for maintaining synchronization between cryptographic message certificates. If a secure over the air (OTA) synchronization connection  28  is available, it may also be used by Cert Sync to maintain synchronization of cryptographic message certificates.  
         [0037]     As previously described, there is a communications link (for example, depicted in dotted lines at  30  in  FIG. 1 ) typically found between the device user&#39;s base unit  24  and a system message server  14 . Accordingly, there is an existing communication path that may be utilized for passing synchronization data from the user&#39;s base unit  24  via channel  30 , the server  14 , Internet  12 , wireless gateway  16  and wireless infrastructure  18  via the OTA synchronization connection  28 .  
         [0038]     E-mail messages generated using the S/MIME and PGP techniques may include encrypted information, a digital signature on the message contents, or both. In signed S/MIME operations the sender takes a digest of a message and signs the digest using the sender&#39;s private key. A digest is essentially a checksum, CRC or other preferably non-reversible operation such as a hash of the message, which is then signed. The signed digest is appended to the outgoing message, possibly along with the certificate of the sender and possibly any required certificates or CRLs. The receiver of this signed message must also take a digest of the message, compare this digest with the digest appended to the message, retrieve the sender&#39;s public key, and verify the signature on the appended digest. If the message content has been changed, the digests will be different or the signature on the digest will not verify properly. If the message is not encrypted, this signature does not prevent anyone from seeing the contents of the message, but does ensure that the message has not been tampered with and is from the actual person as indicated on the “from” field of the message.  
         [0039]     The receiver may also verify the certificate and CRL if they were appended to the message. A certificate chain is a certificate along with a number of other certificates required to verify that the original certificate is authentic. While verifying the signature on a signed message, the receiver of the message will also typically obtain a certificate chain for the signing certificate and verify that each certificate in the chain was signed by the next certificate in the chain, until a certificate is found that was signed by a root certificate from a trusted source, such as, for example, a large Public Key Server (PKS) associated with a Certificate Authority (CA), such as, for example, Verisign or Entrust, both prominent companies in the field of public key cryptography. Once such a root certificate is found, a signature can be verified and trusted, since both the sender and receiver trust the source of the root certificate.  
         [0040]     In encrypted S/MIME message operations, a one-time session key is generated and used to encrypt the body of the message, typically with a symmetric cipher, such as, for example, Triple DES. The session key is then encrypted using the receiver&#39;s public key, typically with a public key encryption algorithm like RSA. If the message is addressed to more than one receiver, the same session key is encrypted using the public key of each receiver. The encrypted message body, as well as all encrypted session keys, is sent to every receiver. Each receiver must then locate its own session key, possibly based on a generated Recipient Info summary of the receivers that may be attached to the message, and decrypt the session key using its private key. Once the session key is decrypted, it is then used to decrypt the message body. The S/MIME Recipient Info attachment can also specify the particular encryption scheme that must be used to decrypt the message. This information is normally placed in the header of the S/MIME message. Those skilled in the art will appreciate that these operations relate to an illustrative example of S/MIME messaging and its associated encoding operations, namely encryption. It will also be understood that the instant disclosure is in no way limited thereto.  
         [0041]      FIG. 4  illustrates a situation where encoded messages are provided to a mobile device  410  by a server  408  contained within a wireless connector system  406 . With reference to  FIG. 4 , an encoded message  404  from a sender  402  is provided to the wireless connector system  406 . The server  408  within the wireless connector system  406  analyzes the encoded message  404  with respect to its size. If the size is determined to be above some predetermined threshold, then the server  408  may notify the mobile device  410  with size related information  414 . The server may process the encoded message  412  before sending it to the mobile device such that the encoded message  412  is below the predetermined threshold size. Moreover, data item  412  may be further processed by the server  408  such that the message is partially decoded and the result of such processing sent to the mobile device  410 .  
         [0042]     As an exemplary operational scenario, current mobile device implementations typically have a limit on the message size that will reach the mobile device, such as, for example, 32 KB. If an S/MIME message is over 32 KB, then the entire message will not completely reach the mobile device. As such, if the message is signed, then it cannot be verified on the mobile device due to the size limitation. The server in this situation may send an indication to the mobile device that the message is too large to be verified by the mobile device and that verification has already been done by the server. The user receiving this message will then be aware that verification of the message has already been accomplished.  
         [0043]     According to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention, as illustrated in  FIG. 5 , the server is operable to assist the size-limited mobile device in verifying the message itself. As an operational illustrative example, a secure (e.g., signed) message that is too large for the size-limited device may be made include an attachment. Start indication block  500  indicates that process block  502  has received a message at the server. Decision block  504  examines the message to determine if the size is above a predetermined threshold. The message size includes the size of any attachments that may be present. If the message size is not above the predetermined threshold, the message is provided to the size-limited device  506  after the server has performed any additional customary processing of the message. If the message is too large for the size-limited device, the server may perform additional steps to assist the size-limited device in verifying the message. For example, the server determines the point in the secure electronic message encoding where the message will be cut off due to the size constraints of the size-limited device. The server determines if the cut off point occurs in such a location that verification of the message will not be possible on the size-limited device, such as, for example, part way through the signed data or in the middle of the signature data. If the message is determined to be too long such that verification is not possible on the device, then the server can attempt to verify the signature on the message.  
         [0044]     As an operational example, assume that the message data is made up of three parts, A, B and C, where B is a large attachment. After determining that the message is too large for the size-limited device, the server may remove the attachment B from the message to prevent it from being sent to the size-limited device  508 . Consequently, the attachment B will not be sent to the size-limited device. Because the attachment has been removed from the electronic message, the size-limited device will be unable to verify the signature. In order to assist the size-limited device in verifying the message, the server may apply a hashing function to parts A, B and C, in sequence  510 . In a preferred embodiment, the hashing function applied to parts A, B and C is the same as that used in signature generation. After each part has been hashed, the hashing function has a context associated therewith. The size-limited device, of course, only has parts A and C, so when it performs a hash, it will have the same context after hashing part A, but will have the incorrect starting context when it hashes part C.  
         [0045]     In this situation, the server can insert the hash context after it hashed part A and the hash context after it hashed part B in place of the attachment B in the original message  512 . Because the hash contexts are much smaller than the application data, the size-limited device should be able to accept this data. Accordingly, after the size-limited device performs its hash of part A, it can compare the hash context obtained from hashing part A with the hash context received from the server when it hashed part A. If these contexts match, the device can then substitute the hash context received from the server after it hashed part B, and the device can then continue to hash part C  514 . This result can then be used to verify the signature  516 .  
         [0046]     Another example is illustrated in  FIG. 6 . In this example, steps  600 ,  602 ,  604 ,  606 ,  608  and  610  correspond substantially to steps  500 ,  502 ,  504 ,  506 ,  508  and  510  of  FIG. 5 . According to this example, the server could alternatively insert the result of performing an exclusive OR function (XOR) of the context after hashing part A with the context after hashing part B  612 . The device would then perform a hash of part A, take this context and perform an XOR with the value the server provides for the context after hashing part B  614 . The device then takes the result of that XOR function and uses it as the context after hashing part B  616 , to verify the signature  618 . This alternative further reduces the amount of data required to be sent to the size-limited device.  
         [0047]     As yet another example, the server may only verify levels of the message. For example, in S/MIME the actual steps involved in verifying a message involve taking multiple digests and then performing an actual signature verification calculation. In this exemplary embodiment, the server may verify that the digests match, but leave the signature verification calculation to the size-limited device.  
         [0048]     While the foregoing has been described in conjunction with specific exemplary embodiments, it is evident that many alternatives, modifications and variations will be apparent to those skilled in the art. Accordingly, the exemplary embodiments set forth herein are intended to be illustrative, not limiting. Various changes may be made without departing from the true spirit and full scope of the invention as defined in the appended claims.