Group-Access Control of Confidential Files in E-Commerce Management Using Shared-Secret Scheme

A threshold scheme is employed for protecting confidential files against unauthorized perusal and permitting collective update in an e-commerce environment. The proposed system requires a subset of a designated group of ‘trustees’ readily available over the network in an operational time frame (e.g., a session). Sensitive applications running on a physically secure machine contain built-in processing to initiate collective authorization when needs arise. Authorizations in the form of partial passwords are sent over the network and are protected using SSL based cryptographic protocols. A collective encryption/decryption for file mechanism to control read accesses is also described.