Evolution of the e-Museum concept through exploitation of cryptographic algorithms

Abstract

Nowadays more and more modern museums have digitized their collections and created e-museums. In this paper, a novel framework for enhancing the concept of e-Museum is proposed. The framework is based on cryptographic algorithms, specifically hash functions and block ciphers. The first are used for continuous hashing and digest matching of the database's contents for quality assurance. The block ciphers are used so as to enable on-line selling, through encryption of the digital object and offering the resulted ciphertext. The system's infrastructure that implements the above framework is also described. It has to be stressed that it is the first time that cryptographic principles are exploited this way in the Cultural Heritage domain.