Patent ID: 8132005

Claim:
A method comprising: (i) performing the following at a first communication party of two communication parties between which a trusted relationship is to be established, creating a set of data comprising at least identities of the two communication parties and identifying a session between the two communicating parties; performing a first set of cryptographic computations based on the created set of data relating to an identity of the first communication party to derive a first problem instance; solving the first problem instance, where solving the first problem instance requires at least superpolynomial effort; generating a proof-of-work for the solving of the first problem instance, wherein the proof-of-work is purpose-bound for establishing the trusted relationship; and transmitting the set of data and the proof-of-work to the second communication party, and thereupon (ii) performing the following at the second communication party, receiving the set of data and the proof-of-work from the first communication party; performing a second set of cryptographic computations based on the received set of data to derive a second problem instance, where the first problem instance is identical to the second problem instance; verifying the proof-of-work for the solving of the second problem instance; and generating and transmitting to the first communication party a session object for the trusted relationship based on the session identified in the set of data, when the verifying yields an affirmative result, where the session object comprises information for communicating between the two communication parties without an introduction protocol.