Patent ID: 8438628

Claim:
A method of establishing a secure split-terminated communication connection between a client and a server, the method comprising: receiving access to a private cryptographic key of the server at a first network intermediary within a path of communications between the client and the server, wherein the path of communications also includes a second network intermediary; receiving from the client and the server handshaking messages for establishing the communication connection; extracting one or more fields from the handshaking messages; for each of the handshaking messages, forwarding the handshaking message toward the other of the client and the server from which the handshaking message was received; computing a session key at the first network intermediary using the one or more fields, wherein the session key is separately computed by the client and the server; transmitting the session key to the second network intermediary; at the second network intermediary: receiving from the client a data request encrypted with the session key; decrypting the encrypted request; optimizing the request; and forwarding the optimized request to the first network intermediary; and at the first network intermediary: un-optimizing the optimized request to retrieve the request; re-encrypting the request with the session key; and forwarding the re-encrypted request to the server.