SYSTEM AND METHOD OF HIDING CRYPTOGRAPHIC PRIVATE KEYS

The invention relates to a system and method of hiding cryptographic private keys. While public/private key encryption systems are considered to be secure, the private keys ultimately must be stored in some location—in fact, in some digital commerce systems the private key is sent to the end user as part of an executable file such as an audio player and audio file. Thus, attackers can obtain access to the private key. The broad concept of the invention is to split the private key up into parts which are obfuscated, but still kept in a form that allows the encrypted data to be decrypted. One technique for obfuscating the private key uses modulo arithmetic.