US 12,001,523 B2
Software access through heterogeneous encryption
Marco Simioni, Dublin (IE); and Stefano Braghin, Dublin (IE)
Assigned to International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US)
Filed by International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US)
Filed on Sep. 29, 2020, as Appl. No. 17/036,577.
Prior Publication US 2022/0100822 A1, Mar. 31, 2022
Int. Cl. G06F 21/10 (2013.01); G06F 9/445 (2018.01); G06F 21/60 (2013.01); H04L 9/08 (2006.01)
CPC G06F 21/105 (2013.01) [G06F 9/44521 (2013.01); G06F 21/602 (2013.01); H04L 9/0819 (2013.01); G06F 21/107 (2023.08)] 20 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method comprising:
generating, from a set of programs and based on a first encryption process with a primary key and with a set of program attributes, a heterogeneous program payload, the heterogeneous program payload containing an unencrypted component and a set of encrypted components, the set of encrypted components corresponding to a set of one or more programs, the unencrypted component of the heterogeneous program payload including loader program code configured to receive a first license key, wherein the set of program attributes correspond to the set of programs, wherein each program attribute of the set of program attributes identifies a corresponding program of the set of programs, the loader program code configured to, in response to receiving the first license key, perform a decryption action against the set of encrypted components of the heterogeneous program payload, the result of the decryption action dependent on encrypted program attributes in the first license key;
providing, to a first computing device, a first copy of the heterogeneous program payload;
generating, based on a second encryption process with the primary key and with a first subset of the set of program attributes, the first license key, wherein the first license key contains a first set of one or more encrypted program attributes that correspond to a first subset of the set of encrypted components.