A Cryptographic Solution to Discretionary Access Control in Structurally Object-Oriented Databases

A new approach to the discretionary access control in structurally object-oriented databases is suggested. The approach is based on the use of pseudo-random functions and sibling intractable functions, rather than on the traditional access control list associated with each class. The advantage of this approach is that each class in the hierarchy of a complex object class can be associated with one access key such that it can be directly accessed by its ancestor without the need to pass through any intermediate classes. The security of the model depends on the diiculty of predicting the output of pseudo-random functions and on nding extra sibling collision for the sibling intractable function family.