Patent ID: 7120793

Claim:
A system for verifying the status of an electronic certificate having a serial number comprising: a computer readable medium; a set of certificate revocation records, derived from a certificate authority, contained in said computer readable medium; a set of computer readable instructions embodied in said computer readable medium for receiving a certificate status request for the electronic certificate from a requesting party, determining a fingerprint for the electronic certificate's issuer, appending said fingerprint to said serial number, formatting said serial number and appended fingerprint into a dotted decimal format, including said serial number and said fingerprint in dotted decimal format within said certificate status request, querying said set of certificate revocation records having revocation information representing the status of the electronic certificate embodied in said computer readable medium according to said certificate status request, and, transmitting said revocation information to the requesting party if said certificate revocation record is successfully retrieved from said set of certificate revocation records so that said requesting party can be informed of the status of the electronic certificate.