JP2002261750A - Documentation process date certifying apparatus and certifying method - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a documentation process date certifying apparatus for certifying the processing date of a document. SOLUTION: A document acquisition device 11 acquires a document to be certified, a key issuer 12 prepares a key pair composed of an encrypting key and a decoding key for each specified timing, an encrypter 13 encrypts the document to be certified, using the encrypting key inputted from the issuer 12, and outputs it to an information publisher 15 and a key manager 14 stores past generated decoding keys related to date information.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

[0001] 1. Field of the Invention [0002] The present invention relates to an apparatus for guaranteeing the processing date and time of an electronic document.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In recent years, according to a mode such as a Web page,
The number of electronic documents published via a telecommunications network has increased, and this includes information that has been conventionally distributed as bibliographies. Such information is immediately accessible and forms part of the general knowledge in each field. In view of such circumstances, for example, the Patent Law and the like are taking measures such as setting "an invention made available to the public through a telecommunication line" as a reason for hindering novelty.

[0003] On the other hand, not only in the Japanese Patent Law which requires patentability for novelty at the time of filing, but also at the time when these electronic documents are published at the time of claiming the priority of the research contents or proving at the time of acquisition. It is important to confirm that

[0004]

However, in the above-described conventional mode of publishing an electronic document, it is generally difficult to determine the registration date and time, and thus it is difficult to confirm the time of publication. In particular, electronic documents have the characteristic of being easy to revise, and even if the electronic document was released at a certain point in time, it was later tampered with and the content was confirmed at what point in time it was released It is difficult to do.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made in view of the above circumstances, and has as its object to provide a processing date and time assurance apparatus which can reliably assure the processing date and time of an electronic document.

[0006]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention for solving the above-mentioned problems of the prior art is directed to an apparatus for guaranteeing the date and time of a predetermined process for a document to be published, according to the date and time of the predetermined process. Key generating means for generating a date-time-specific encryption key and a corresponding decryption key; means for encrypting the document using the encryption key to generate an encrypted document; and opening the encrypted document Means for publishing a decryption key corresponding to a unique encryption key for each date and time,
It is characterized by having. Thus, the content of the electronic document published at a specific time is encrypted with the encryption key valid at that time, and the content of the electronic document and the publication time are reliably guaranteed.

Here, it is preferable that the predetermined process is at least one of an input process, a document operation process, and an output process. The input processing includes document reception processing and reception processing, the document operation processing includes document conversion processing and encryption processing, and the output processing includes document transmission processing, registration processing, and publication processing. Is included.

Here, the means for publishing the decryption key holds a table in which the decryption key generated in the past is associated with the processing date and time, and holds an encryption table obtained by encrypting the table. Is preferred. This prevents the correspondence between the decryption key and the date and time from being falsified. Preferably, the table is encrypted by a third-party notary. Further, the key generation means includes:
It is also preferable that when the encryption key is generated, the previous encryption key cannot be referred to. Thereby, reliability can be further improved.

Further, the present invention for solving the above-mentioned problem of the conventional example is an apparatus for providing an encryption key and a corresponding decryption key, the clock means for measuring time, and the clock means for the clock means. Means for issuing and updating an encryption key to be provided and a corresponding decryption key at each preset timing with reference to the clock time, wherein the encryption key and the decryption key are It is characterized in that it is provided for processing for guaranteeing the date and time of the predetermined processing of the electronic document. Here, the timing for updating the encryption key and the decryption key may be a fixed time interval. In this case, it is guaranteed that the processing has been performed in a time zone delimited by the time interval. In this way, the guarantee in the time zone can reduce the number of key updates and reduce the processing load.

The present invention for solving the problems of the above-mentioned prior art is a method for guaranteeing the date and time of a predetermined process for a document to be published. Generating a key and a corresponding decryption key; encrypting the document using the encryption key to generate an encrypted document; publishing the encrypted document; and Publishing a decryption key corresponding to a unique encryption key for each device.

[0011]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS [First Embodiment] An embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings. The processing date and time assurance device 1 according to the first embodiment of the present invention is shown in FIG.
As shown in FIG. 1, the user side device includes a document acquisition unit 11, a key issuing unit 12, an encryption unit 13, a key management unit 14, and an information disclosure unit 15 via the Internet as a telecommunication network. 2 and the file server 3. Further, the processing date and time assurance device 1 is connected to a third-party notary institution side device 4.

The document acquisition unit 11 acquires the electronic document to be guaranteed uploaded from the user side device 2 and outputs it to the encryption unit 13. Further, the document acquisition unit 11 accesses the file server 3 to acquire an electronic document to be guaranteed, and outputs the electronic document to the encryption unit 13. In addition, the document acquisition unit 11 outputs the acquired electronic document to the information disclosure unit 15. As shown in FIG. 2, the key issuing unit 12
And a generation unit 22. The clock 21 measures the current time. The generation unit 22 refers to the current time measured by the clock 21 and at each preset timing (for example, 1 At each time, a key pair including an encryption key and a corresponding decryption key is generated and output to the encryption unit 13.

The encryption unit 13 holds a key pair input from the key issuing unit 12. When a new key pair is input from the key issuing unit 12, the encryption unit 13 discards the held key pair, holds the newly input key pair, and updates the key pair. The decryption key of the updated key pair is output to the key management unit 14. When an electronic document is input from the document acquisition unit 11, the encryption unit 13 refers to the key pair held at that time, encrypts the input electronic document using an encryption key, and performs encryption. The converted electronic document is output to the information disclosure unit 15 together with the decryption key.

The key management unit 14 receives the input of the decryption key from the encryption unit 13, stores the input date and time information and the decryption key in association with each other, and stores the information as a key management table as shown in FIG. , To the information disclosure unit 15. Also,
The key management unit 14 encrypts and holds the key management table with a predetermined encryption key. Further, the key management unit 14
Receives the encryption key for multiple encryption from the third party notary institution 4 and further encrypts (multiple encrypts) the encrypted key management table with the received encryption key. This increases the reliability of the relationship between the date and the time and the decryption key.

The information disclosure unit 15 receives the input of the electronic document before encryption from the document acquisition unit 11 and receives the input of the encrypted electronic document and the decryption key from the encryption unit 13.
These are stored in association with each other and made public via the telecommunications network. Further, the information disclosure unit 15 receives the input of the key management table and discloses the key management table via a telecommunication network.

The above-described units of the processing date and time assurance apparatus 1 can be realized as a program processed by a server computer. In this case, the program is CD-RO
It is provided in a state of being stored in a recording medium such as M, is read by an external storage device (not shown), and is stored on the server computer. The central processing unit of the server computer realizes the processing date and time assurance device 1 by executing this program.

The user device 2 is a general personal computer and is connected to the Internet.
The user creates an electronic document using the user-side device 2, provides the electronic document to the processing date and time assurance device 1, obtains the release time guarantee, and publishes the electronic document with the information disclosure unit 15. . The file server 3 is a Web server or the like, and generally stores a plurality of electronic documents, and provides a requested one of the plurality of electronic documents via a telecommunication network. The third-party notary institution 4 encrypts the data in response to the request, and holds the decryption key so that it can be accessed via the telecommunications network.

Next, the processing date / time assurance device 1 of the present embodiment
Will be described. A user who has created an electronic document using the user-side device 2 sends the created electronic document to the processing date and time assurance device 1.

The processing date and time assurance device 1 updates the encryption key and the corresponding decryption key at each predetermined timing, and holds the electronic document received from the user side device 2 as a guarantee object as a currently valid one. The electronic document to be guaranteed is encrypted by using the encrypted encryption key, and the electronic document before encryption, the encrypted electronic document, and the decryption key are made public in association with each other.

The processing date and time assurance device 1 outputs the decryption key to the key management unit 14 when updating the encryption key and the decryption key. Then, the key management unit 14 holds the input date and time of the decryption key and the decryption key in the key management table in association with each other.

When certifying the processing date and time, an electronic document (called an original) published by the processing date and time assurance apparatus 1, an encrypted electronic document, and a decryption key are obtained.
The encrypted electronic document is decrypted with the decryption key to extract a plaintext electronic document. Then, the original and the plain text electronic document are compared to check whether they match. If they match, the date and time when the decryption key was input to the key management unit 14 is checked from the key management table. In this way, the date and time associated with the decryption key (information of the date and time indicating the time zone in which the encryption key corresponding to the decryption key is valid) is certified as the processing date and time.

Here, the case where the key issuing unit 12 is provided inside the processing date and time assurance device 1 has been described, but the key issuing unit 12 may be connected to the Internet as a separate device. In this case, the processing date and time assurance device 1
An encryption key and a decryption key are obtained from a separate device including the key issuing unit 12, and used for encryption processing. This way,
The time information is managed by the operator of the device including the key issuing unit 12, and the reliability can be improved.

[Second Embodiment] In the above description, the date and time when the document is received by the document acquisition unit 11 and
Of the date and time when the document was encrypted by the encryption unit 13 and the date and time when the document was released by the information disclosure unit 15, the date and time of encryption were actually used as the processing date and time. Therefore, a slight deviation from the time of acceptance or publication must be tolerated in practice. On the other hand, in many cases, it is important to guarantee a point in time when an input process is performed, for example, when a document is actually received, or a point in time when an output process is performed, such as when a document is made public. Therefore, in the present embodiment, a configuration in which the date and time of the input / output processing is guaranteed will be described. The processing date and time assurance apparatus 1 according to the present embodiment has the same configuration as the processing date and time assurance apparatus 1 according to the first embodiment shown in FIG. 1, but the processing of each unit is slightly different.

That is, in the present embodiment, the encryption unit 13 generates a key pair including a new encryption key and a decryption key according to an instruction from the document acquisition unit 11 or the information disclosure unit 15 instead of the clock 21.

When assuring the point in time of the input processing, the document acquisition unit 11 manages the acquisition date and time of each document (this date and time information is acquired from a time server (NTP server or the like) via the Internet, for example). can do),
Output to the encryption unit 13 in the order of acquisition. Document acquisition unit 1
1 outputs the data to the encryption unit 13, refers to the acquisition date and time, and instructs the encryption unit 13 to generate a new key pair every time it is after a predetermined timing.
To generate a key pair every hour,
A key pair is generated each time the acquisition date and time reaches a timing set every hour.

When assuring the output processing time, the information publishing unit 15 manages the publication date and time of the document by the same processing, and each time the publication date and time reaches a predetermined timing, a new key pair is created. Is generated.

As described above, each processing unit manages the processing date and time of the document to be processed, and generates a unique key pair related to the processing date and time, thereby performing the encryption. You can be assured.

Here, the key management unit 14 is
Instead of receiving the input of the decryption key from, it receives the information of the date and time related to the key pair from the processing unit (for example, the document acquisition unit 11 or the information disclosure unit 15) that instructed the generation of the key pair, and generates the decryption key together with this information. It will be stored in the key management table.

In the above description of the first and second embodiments, the document before encryption, the encrypted document, and the decryption key have been described as being disclosed in the information disclosure unit 15. These pieces of information may be transmitted to the file server 3 and made public on the file server 3.

[0030]

According to the present invention, an encryption key unique to the date and time and a decryption key corresponding to the date and time are generated in accordance with the date and time of the predetermined processing, and the document to be guaranteed is converted to the generated encryption key. To generate an encrypted document, publish the encrypted document, and publish the decryption key corresponding to the unique encryption key for each date and time. It can be guaranteed for sure.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a processing date and time assurance device 1 according to a first embodiment.
FIG. 2 is a configuration block diagram illustrating a system including a.

FIG. 2 is a configuration block diagram illustrating an example of a key issuing unit 12.

FIG. 3 is an explanatory diagram illustrating an example of a key management table in a key management unit 14.

[Explanation of symbols]

1 Processing date and time assurance device, 2 user side device, 3 file server, 3rd party notary institution side device, 11 document acquisition unit, 12 key issuing unit, 13 encryption unit, 14 key management unit,
15 Information disclosure unit, 21 clock, 22 generation unit.

Claims (9)

[Claims] 1. An apparatus for guaranteeing a date and time of a predetermined process for a document to be published, a key generating means for generating an encryption key unique to the date and time and a decryption key corresponding to the date and time according to the date and time of the predetermined process. Means for encrypting the document using the encryption key to generate an encrypted document; means for publishing the encrypted document; and publishing a decryption key corresponding to a unique encryption key for each date and time. A processing date and time assurance device, comprising: 2. The processing date and time assurance device according to claim 1, wherein the predetermined process is at least one of an input process, a document operation process, and an output process. 3. The processing date and time assurance device according to claim 1, wherein the means for publishing the decryption key holds a table in which a decryption key generated in the past is associated with the processing date and time. A processing date and time assurance device that holds an encrypted table obtained by encrypting a table. 4. The processing date and time assurance device according to claim 3, wherein the table is encrypted by a third-party notary authority. 5. The processing date and time assurance device according to claim 1, wherein said key generation means sets a state in which a previous encryption key cannot be referred to when an encryption key is generated. Processing date and time assurance device. 6. An apparatus for providing an encryption key and a decryption key corresponding thereto, comprising: clock means for measuring time; and referring to the time measured by said clock means, for each preset timing. Means for issuing and updating an encryption key to be provided and a corresponding decryption key, wherein the encryption key and the decryption key are subjected to assurance processing of the processing date and time of the document. Key providing device. 7. A method for guaranteeing the date and time of a predetermined process for a document to be published, comprising: generating an encryption key unique to the date and time and a decryption key corresponding to the date and time according to the date and time of the predetermined process; Encrypting the document using the encryption key to generate an encrypted document; publishing the encrypted document; and publishing a decryption key corresponding to a unique encryption key for each date and time. And a processing date and time guarantee method comprising: 8. A program for guaranteeing the date and time of a predetermined process for a document to be published, comprising: storing, in a computer, an encryption key unique to the date and time and a corresponding decryption key in accordance with the date and time of the predetermined process; Generating an encrypted document using the encryption key, generating an encrypted document, publishing the encrypted document, and corresponding to a unique encryption key for each date and time. A process for publishing a decryption key to be executed; 9. A computer-readable recording medium storing the processing date and time assurance program according to claim 8.