Patent ID: 8230229

Claim:
A system for verifying the security of a communications network between a set of nodes via a high-bandwidth, insecure communications channel, wherein: one of said nodes, denoted an initiator node, is configured to initiate a run to establish said communications channel and identify itself to the other nodes of said set of nodes; each of said set of nodes is configured to communicate a single collection of information to all the others including its identity; said initiator node is further configured to: compute a digest or hash value of all the information and to communicate sufficient data representative of this to the other nodes thereby establishing a digest method so that the nodes are committed to the digest method but do not calculate the digest or hash value; receive data from each of the other nodes of said set of nodes indicating that said data representative of said digest method has been received; and communicate to each node of said set of nodes sufficient information to enable a respective node to compute said digest method; and each of said set of nodes is further configured to generate a hash or digest of the data received from all nodes in first messages, according to the digest method received from said initiator node, correspondence between said digests held by each of said set of nodes is verifiable via an empirical communication channel, and the security of said communications network is confirmable in the event that said initiator node is among said set of nodes.