Patent ID: 7313701

Claim:
An electronic method for generating shares of a cryptographic value, comprising: (a) selecting a group of initial participants to participate in generating shares of the cryptographic value; (b) initiating the initial participants to perform a process of first, second, and third protocols, the protocols being stored in a computer or computer readable medium, where (i) the first protocol is constructed to compute a number N, (ii) the second protocol is constructed to test the value N for double primality without revealing the factors of N to the participants, (iii) the third protocol is constructed to compute shares of the cryptographic value without revealing the cryptographic value to the participants; and (iv) the process includes procedures to detect whether a participant has deviated from a protocol; (c) commencing the process of performing the protocols; and (d) checking, for at least one of the first, second, and third protocols, whether a participant has deviated from the first, second, and third protocols, respectively.