SECURITY MECHANISM OF PRIVACY ENHANCED SHARED FILE SYSTEM SUITABLE FOR MOBILE ACCESS

This paper describes a novel shared file system, whose main features a re enhanced security and its concurrency control mechanism. The system is especially suitable for access from mobile hosts. Users can edit t heir shared files concurrently, Shared files are encrypted and decrypt ed only by clients. and the file server cannot know the contents. The server asynchronously receives the edited parts, which are already enc rypted, and merges them into the current version, deciphering neither the stored file nor the encrypted editing data. We call the mechanism 'privacy enhanced merging'. The mechanism and the underlying encryptio n algorithm, shared file data structure and procedures followed by cli ents and the server are shown.