Patent attributes
Aspects of associative cryptography key operations are described. In one embodiment, a first cryptographic function is applied to secret data to produce a first encrypted result. The first encrypted result is transmitted by a first device to a second device. The second device applies a second cryptographic function to the first encrypted result to produce a second encrypted result. At this point, the secret data has been encrypted by two different cryptographic functions, each of them being sufficient to secure the secret data from others. The two different cryptographic function can be inversed or removed, in any order, to reveal the secret data. Thus, the first device can apply a first inverse cryptographic function to the second encrypted result to produce a first result, and the second device can apply a second inverse cryptographic function to the first result to decrypt the secret data.