Patent ID: 8694773

Claim:
A method of verifying a validity of a Secure Micro terminal (SM), the method comprising: storing and maintaining, at the SM, a validity verification message used to verify the validity of the SM, the validity verification message being generated by a Trusted Authority device (TA) based on unique information of the SM, and the SM and the TA sharing the unique information of the SM, wherein the unique information of the SM includes a Key_Pairing_ID that includes an identification (ID) of the SM, and wherein Key_Pairing_ID is a value obtained by concatenating an ID of a descrambler chip of the SM and the ID of the SM; verifying, at the SM, the validity of the SM using the validity verification message and the unique information shared in the SM including the Key_Pairing_ID, when an SM client is installed; and requesting the validity verification message, wherein the TA generates a digital signature using a private key of the TA in response to the request, and provides the SM with the validity verification message including the digital signature and the unique information of the SM, and wherein the SM obtains a public key of the TA to verify the digital signature.