Patent ID: 7519178

Claim:
A system for ensuring seeds for generating keys used in cryptography are uniformly distributed, said system comprising: a user computer; a certification authority, said certification authority having a public key and a private key wherein: said user computer randomly generates an integer x having the same number of bits as the desired length (L) of a seed value; said user computer calculates a value y using a publicly known prime and a publicly known generator used to secure communications between said user computer and said certification authority; said user computer sends y to said certification authority; said certification authority randomly generates an L bit integer, z, and computes a number w; said certification authority signs w with said private key of said certification authority; said certification authority sends z and said signed w to said user computer; said user computer computes Xseed such that Xseed is uniformly distributed over the set of integers between 0 and 2 L −1; said user computer computes w; and, said user computer verifies the signature on said signed w sent by the certification authority using said certification authorities public key.