Christopher A Thorpe

US Patent:

8024274, Sep 20, 2011

Filed:

May 7, 2007

Appl. No.:

12/299522

Inventors:

David C. Parkes - Cambridge MA, US
Michael O. Rabin - Cambridge MA, US
Stuart M. Shieber - Brookline MA, US
Christopher A. Thorpe - Lincoln MA, US

Assignee:

President and Fellows of Harvard College - Cambridge MA

International Classification:

G06Q 20/00

US Classification:

705 64, 705 263, 705 78

Abstract:

A system and method for conducting verifiably correct auctions that preserves the secrecy of the bids while providing for verifiable correctness and trustworthiness of the auction is disclosed. Some of the elements of the method and apparatus are that the auction operator accepts all bids submitted and follows the published rules of the auction. In one embodiment, the bids are maintained secret from the auctioneer and all bidders until the auction closes and no bidder is able to change or repudiate her bid. In another embodiment, the auction operator computes the auction results and publishes proofs of the results' correctness. In yet another embodiment, any party can check these proofs of correctness via publicly verifiable computations on encrypted bids.

US Patent:

8526621, Sep 3, 2013

Filed:

Nov 30, 2007

Appl. No.:

12/517088

Inventors:

Michael O. Rabin - Cambridge MA, US
Christopher A. Thorpe - Lincoln MA, US

Assignee:

President And Fellows of Harvard College - Cambridge MA

International Classification:

H04L 9/08

US Classification:

380282, 380247, 380277, 713186

Abstract:

In one embodiment, a Time-Lapse Cryptography Service is provided based on a network of parties. Senders encrypt their messages with this public key whose secret key is not known to anyone—not even a trusted third party—until a predefined and specific future time T+. delta. , at which point the secret key is constructed and published. In one example, the secret key can only be known after it is constructed. At or after that time, anyone can decrypt the cipher text using this secret key. In one embodiment, a method for cryptographic encoding is provided, including generation of cryptographic key components by a plurality of parties, where participation of the parties is verified. A public key is constructed from a plurality of key components.

US Patent:

20090177591, Jul 9, 2009

Filed:

Oct 30, 2008

Appl. No.:

12/261249

Inventors:

Christopher Thorpe - Lincoln MA, US
David C. Parkes - Cambridge MA, US

International Classification:

G06Q 40/00

US Classification:

705 36 R, 705 37

Abstract:

According to one aspect, presented is a useful new mechanism that facilitates the atomic exchange of large baskets of securities in a combinatorial exchange. Some embodiments of the exchange offer institutions who wish to trade large positions a new alternative to existing methods of trading. In one embodiment of an exchange, institutions submit encrypted orders which are crossed (buys, sells, shorts, and longs, for example, are matched) leaving a “remainder”. The exchange proves facts about the portfolio risk of this remainder to third party liquidity providers without revealing the securities in the remainder. The third parties learn either (depending on the setting) the portfolio risk parameters of the remainder itself, or how their own portfolio risk would change if they were to incorporate the remainder into a portfolio they submit. They submit bids on the commission, and the winner supplies necessary liquidity for the entire exchange to clear. According to another aspect, an “institution” (a firm who invests in financial markets) wishes to execute a large basket of trades, and mitigate execution risk by having an intermediary—for example, an investment “bank”—take on the basket into its inventory and unwind the trades on its own. Instead of revealing specific information about the equities in the basket, which could be exploited, the institution and banks can conduct a zero-knowledge protocol in which the banks learn how much the risk profile of their inventory—more generally, their utility—would change if they accepted the basket. In this process, the institution learns nothing about the bank's inventory or risk management beyond the price the bank is willing to pay, and the banks learn nothing about the basket beyond how the overall risk characteristics of their portfolio would change if they accepted the basket.

US Patent:

20090327141, Dec 31, 2009

Filed:

Apr 18, 2008

Appl. No.:

12/105508

Inventors:

Michael O. Rabin - Cambridge MA, US
Rocco A. Servedio - New York NY, US
Christopher Thorpe - Lincoln MA, US

International Classification:

G06Q 20/00
H04L 9/28
G06F 7/58

US Classification:

705 75, 380 28, 708250, 705 37

Abstract:

Presented are methods and systems for highly efficient proofs of correctness of computations that preserve secrecy of the input values and calculations. One embodiment includes a method for verifiably determining at least one output for a secrecy preserving computations where the method includes acts of calculating an output from submitted inputs according to an announced calculation, translating a value in the calculation into two components that are a randomized representation of that value, publishing commitments to the at least two components, revealing a portion of the randomized representation in response to a verification request, and enabling verification of the calculation of the output using the revealed portion of the randomized representation. According to one aspect of the secrecy preserving verification the numbers involved in the secrecy preserving calculation are represented by a randomly constructed representing pair. In another aspect, revealing one member of the pair allows for verification without compromising secrecy. In one embodiment, arrangement of the translation process ensures that in the verification only truly independently random numbers, or operations on them, are revealed and checked.

US Patent:

20110295752, Dec 1, 2011

Filed:

Aug 10, 2011

Appl. No.:

13/207245

Inventors:

David C. Parkes - Cambridge MA, US
Michael O. Rabin - Cambridge MA, US
Stuart M. Shieber - Brookline MA, US
Christopher A. Thorpe - Lincoln MA, US

Assignee:

PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE - Cambridge MA

International Classification:

G06Q 30/00
H04L 9/14

US Classification:

705 64

Abstract:

A system and method for conducting verifiably correct auctions that preserves the secrecy of the bids while providing for verifiable correctness and trustworthiness of the auction is disclosed. Some of the elements of the method and apparatus are that the auction operator accepts all bids submitted and follows the published rules of the auction. In one embodiment, the bids are maintained secret from the auctioneer and all bidders until the auction closes and no bidder is able to change or repudiate her bid. In another embodiment, the auction operator computes the auction results and publishes proofs of the results' correctness. In yet another embodiment, any party can check these proofs of correctness via publicly verifiable to computations on encrypted bids.

US Patent:

20120131591, May 24, 2012

Filed:

Aug 24, 2011

Appl. No.:

13/216934

Inventors:

Jay Moorthi - San Francisco CA, US
Christopher A. Thorpe - Lincoln MA, US
William Josephson - Greenwich CT, US

International Classification:

G06F 9/46

US Classification:

718104

Abstract:

Provided are systems and methods for simplifying cloud compute markets. A compute marketplace can be configured to determine, automatically, attributes and/or constraints associated with a job without requiring the consumer to provide them. The compute marketplace provides a clearing house for excess compute resources which can be offered privately or publically. The compute environment can be further configured to optimize job completion across multiple providers with different execution formats, and can also factor operating expense of the compute environment into the optimization. The compute marketplace can also be configured to monitor jobs and/or individual job partitions while their execution is in progress. The compute marketplace can be configured to dynamically redistribute jobs/job partitions across providers when, for example, cycle pricing changes during execution, providers fail to meet defined constraints, excess capacity becomes available, compute capacity becomes unavailable, among other options.

US Patent:

20130152047, Jun 13, 2013

Filed:

Nov 21, 2012

Appl. No.:

13/682811

Inventors:

Solano Labs, Inc - San Francisco CA, US
Christopher A. Thorpe - Lincoln MA, US
William Josephson - Greenwich CT, US

Assignee:

Solano Labs, Inc - San Francisco CA

International Classification:

G06F 11/36

US Classification:

717124

Abstract:

Provided is a system for building and validating an application (including e.g., various software versions and revisions, programming languages, code segments, among other examples) without any scripting required by a system user. In one embodiment, an SDLC system is configured to construct a build and test environment, by automatically analyzing a submitted project. The build environment is configured to assemble existing user code, for example, to generate an application to test. Code building can include any one or more of code compilation, assembly, and code interpretation. The system can include a user interface provided to clients, users, and/or customer environments to facilitate user interaction and control of build and test validation. The system can accept user specification of configurations that controls the way the system runs the user's tests. The system can also provide flexible billing models for different customers.

US Patent:

20200084274, Mar 12, 2020

Filed:

Nov 12, 2019

Appl. No.:

16/681032

Inventors:

- San Francisco CA, US
William Josephson - Greenwich CT, US
Steven R. Willis - Cambridge MA, US
Thomas E. Westberg - Stow MA, US
Christopher A. Thorpe - Lincoln MA, US

International Classification:

H04L 29/08
H04L 29/06

Abstract:

A distributed data storage system is provided for offering shared data to one or more clients. In various embodiments, client systems operate on shared data while having a unique writeable copy of the shared data. According to one embodiment, the data storage system can be optimized for various use cases (e.g., read-mostly where writes to shared data are rare or infrequent (although writes to private data may be frequent. Some implementations of the storage system are configured to provide fault tolerance and scalability for the shared storage. For example, read-only data can be stored in (relatively) high latency, low cost, reliable storage (e.g. cloud), with multiple layers of cache supporting faster retrieval. In addition, some implementations of the data storage system offer a low-latency approach to data caching. Other embodiments improve efficiency with access modeling and conditional execution cache hints that can be distributed across the data storage system.