Cryptographic methods implementing proofs of work in systems of interconnected nodes

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-2016358169-A1
Application number	US-201514645587-A
Country	US
Kind code	A1
Filing date	Mar 12, 2015
Priority date	Mar 12, 2015
Publication date	Dec 8, 2016
Grant date	—

Abstract

The present invention is notably directed to methods, systems and computer program products for securing data operations in a computerized system comprising interconnected nodes, wherein the nodes are configured to transmit, receive and store data, and wherein the method comprises executing computerized cryptographic methods to implement two or more proofs of work that comprises: provably crawling, from each node of at least a subset of the interconnected nodes, a respective subset of data stored on nodes of the system; and provably acquiring, at each node of the subset, data in the subset of data.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1 . A method for securing data operations in a computerized system comprising interconnected nodes configured to transmit, receive and store data, comprising:
executing computerized cryptographic methods to implement two or more proofs of work, wherein the computerized cryptographic methods comprise provably crawling, from each node of at least a subset of the interconnected nodes, a respective subset of data stored on nodes of the system, and provably acquiring, at each node of the subset, data in said subset of data.

2 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising: assigning one or more addresses to each node of the subset, wherein each of the addresses assigned is a reference to a digital resource, and wherein provably crawling is performed, from each node of the subset, according to one or more addresses assigned to each node of the subset.

3 . The method of claim 2 , wherein the addresses are provided by the system.

4 . The method of claim 2 , wherein the method comprises redundantly assigning one or more same addresses to two or more nodes of the subset to obtain a redundancy of crawling operations performed by said two or more nodes.

5 . The method of claim 4 , wherein said cryptographic methods are furthermore configured such that a third-party can provably retrieve data stored on one or more of the nodes of the subset, according to a crypto-protocol using said redundancy, and wherein the method further comprises: provably retrieving data stored on said one or more of the nodes of the subset.

6 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
securely rewarding, according to a cryptocurrency-like protocol, said each node of the subset for having caused to provably crawl said respective subset of data and/or provably acquired said data in said subset of data.

7 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
storing, at said each node of the subset, data that it has acquired.

8 . The method of claim 7 , wherein the system is furthermore configured for receiving data search queries, the method further comprising: distributing data search queries received by the system across nodes of said subset of interconnected nodes to serve the data search queries received, wherein distributing the queries is performed according to a redundancy of data stored on said nodes of said subset of interconnected nodes.

9 . The method of claim 7 , further comprising:
securely rewarding, according to a cryptocurrency protocol, said each node of the subset for having provably stored said data that it has acquired.

10 . The method of claim 7 , further comprising, at said one or more of the nodes of the subset:
indexing data stored thereon; and ranking results of indexing said data.

11 . The method of claim 10 , wherein ranking the results is performed according to a redundancy of data stored on said one or more of the nodes of the subset.

12 . The method of claim 10 , further comprising:
securely rewarding, according to a cryptocurrency protocol, said one or more of the nodes of the subset for having provably indexed data stored thereon.

13 . The method of claim 10 , wherein the system is furthermore configured for receiving data search queries, the method further comprising:
distributing data search queries received by the system across nodes of said subset of interconnected nodes to serve the data search queries received, wherein distributing the data search queries is performed according to an outcome of ranking results of indexing said data.

14 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the system is furthermore configured for receiving data search queries, the method further comprising:
distributing data search queries received by the system across one or more of the nodes of the subset to serve the data search queries received.

15 . The method of claim 14 , further comprising, securely rewarding, according to a cryptocurrency protocol, one or more of the nodes of said subset for having provably served search queries distributed across them.

16 . The method of claim 1 , wherein one or each of the two or more proofs of work is digitally signed.

17 . The method of claim 1 , wherein said cryptographic methods are configured to secure data stored on the nodes of the subset and data transmissions across said nodes of the subset.

18 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
ensuring redundancy of the data crawled and acquired by said each node of the subset, across nodes of the subset.

19 . A computerized system for securing data operations, comprising interconnected nodes configured to transmit, receive and store data, and for executing computerized cryptographic methods to implement two or more proofs of work by provably crawling, from each node of at least a subset of the interconnected nodes, a respective subset of data stored on nodes of the system, and provably acquiring, at said each node of the subset, data in said subset of data.

20 . A computer program product for securing data operations, the computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium having program instructions embodied therewith, the program instructions executable by nodes interconnected in a computerized system for securing data operations, to cause the nodes to execute computerized cryptographic methods to implement two or more proofs of work by provably crawling, from each node of at least a subset of the interconnected nodes, a respective subset of data stored on nodes of the system, and provably acquiring, at said each node of the subset, data in said subset of data.

Assignees

• IBM

Inventors

• Androulaki Elli
• Gusat Mircea
• Koltsidas Ioannis
• Soimu Maria

Classifications

• G06F16/24578

  using ranking · CPC title

• G06F21/602

  Providing cryptographic facilities or services · CPC title

• H04L9/3236

  using cryptographic hash functions · CPC title

• G06Q20/065

  using e-cash · CPC title

• G06F16/951

  Indexing; Web crawling techniques · CPC title