Patent ID: 6970565

Claim:
A method of securely downloading and installing a patch program in a plurality of computing devices, each computing device having a processor, program memory and patch memory, said method comprising the steps of: encrypting the entire contents of said patch program using a shared key to generate a first encrypted patch program, said shared key being known to a plurality of computing devices; transmitting said first encrypted patch program to a plurality of said computing devices over a nonsecure communications channel; receiving said first encrypted patch program at a computing device; decrypting said first encrypted patch program utilizing said shared key to generate a first clear patch program; re-encrypting the entire contents of said clear patch program utilizing a unique key known only to and hardwired into that particular computing device and storing a resultant second encrypted patch program in memory; upon subsequent reset, retrieving said second encrypted patch program from said memory and decrypting said second encrypted patch program utilizing said unique key to generate a second clear patch program; and loading said second clear patch program into said patch memory for execution by said computing device.