Serial decomposition of feedforward neural networks

A method for protecting digital content from copying and/or other misuse as it is transferred between one or more computationally constrained devices over insecure links, includes preliminarily authenticating that both a content source and a content sink are compliant devices, and transferring content between compliant devices. In a further aspect of the invention, in the background, concurrently with the transfer of content, at least a second cryptographic process is performed.In an embodiment, establishing a preliminary control channel includes exchanging random challenges between devices, encrypting, under a shared secret key, and hashing the exchanged random challenges, exchanging the results of the encryption and hash functions and then verifying that the appropriate results have been generated.