Manicoding for communication verification

Abstract

Verifiable, secure communications between a sender and a receiver on at least one shared communication channel is provided. A manicoded key encoder produces an argument of knowledge for a secret key to the at least one shared communication channel, and a manicoded message encoder provides an implication argument indicating that knowledge of the secret key enables access to message content of the manicoded message. The argument of knowledge is included in a key manifest for the secret key within a manicoded key, and the implication argument is included in a message manifest of a manicoded message. In this way, the sender may provide message content within the manicoded message, and the receiver may operate a decoder to access the message content. A verifier may use the manicoded key and the manicoded message to verify that the receiver has access to the message content.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A computer program product for providing verification of access to certified content between at least two computing devices having access to at least one shared communication channel, the computer program product including instructions recorded on a non-transitory computer readable storage medium and configured, when executed by at least one computer processor, to cause the at least one computer processor to:
 observe, at a verifier, a digitally represented message provided on the at least one shared communication channel, the message including content and a first implication argument indicating to the verifier that access to a first secret key enables access to the content by virtue of availability of a first extraction process; and   observe, at the verifier, a digitally represented certificate provided on the at least one shared communication channel, the certificate indicating that the content is certified; and   observe, at the verifier, a digitally represented access argument provided on the at least one shared communication channel, the access argument indicating to the verifier that a recipient has access to a second secret key; and   observe, at the verifier, a digitally represented second implication argument provided on the at least one shared communication channel, the second implication argument indicating to the verifier that access to the second secret key enables access to the first key by virtue of availability of a second extraction process;   compare, at the verifier, the first implication argument and the certificate and the access argument and the second implication argument, provided on the at least one shared communication channel; and   verify that the recipient has the access to the first key, by virtue of the availability of the second extraction process and of the access to the second secret key, and the access to the content, by virtue of the availability of the first extraction process and of the access to the first key, and that the content is certified, by virtue of the certificate, to thereby provide the verification of access of the recipient to the certified content.