A Software Key Escrow System Suitable for Broadcasting

Abstract

The Escrowed Encryption Standard (ESS) allows the Law Enforcement Agent to trace the sender by decrypting the Law Enforcement Access Field (LEAF). However, to prevent users from deleting the LEAF, the Clipper chip must by tamperproof. In this paper, we present a software key escrow system without a tamperproof hardware. In this system, the Law Enforcement Agent is allowed to wiretap the special designated communication once. Futhermore, to be more suitable for broadcasting, the LEAF is modified to make the tracting of the sender and the recipient possible.