Patent ID: 8443193

Claim:
A method for certifying an email message not known in its entirety by any one of multiple parties, the e-mail including a plurality of headers and a message body, the method comprising: creating at a first computer operated by a mail sender, a data context for holding a state of an in-process hash, said data context comprising at least a 64-byte long internal buffer, five integers that hold the internal state, an internal counter, and a byte order endian flag; processing data including a plurality of the headers and the message body portion of the message known by the email sender according to a hash function; storing in the data context in consecutive memory a state of the processed data portion of the message known by the email sender; creating a representation of the state of the processed data portion of the message known by the email sender, the representation including printable characters; and transmitting the representation of the state of the processed data portion over a network to a second computer operated by a mail signer.