Patent ID: 7305548

Claim:
In a computer system that received data for generating an unencrypted version of a session key in response to authenticating with an authentication server, a method for including a significant portion of the information needed to process a message at an application server within the message, the method comprising: an act of sending a request to the authentication server, the request indicating a desire to access a service at the application server; an act of receiving a binary token from the authentication server, the binary token containing an encrypted version of the session key within the binary token, wherein the session key was encrypted by the authentication server using a service key that is shared between the authentication server and the application server; an act of using the unencrypted version of session key to generate encrypted application data that is to be delivered to the service at the application server; an act of encoding the encrypted application data and the binary token containing the encrypted version of the session key into a text format, wherein numeric values of the binary data are represented by corresponding text characters; and an act of sending, via a text-based electronic messaging scheme, a message that includes text-encoded encrypted application data and a text-encoded token which contains the encrypted version of the session key to the application server.