DISTRIBUTED CRYPTOGRAPHIC OBJECT METHOD

A system for increasing the security of a computer system, while giving an individual user a large amount of flexibility and power. To give users the most power and flexibility, a standard object that has the capability to embed objects is used. To allow users even more flexibility, a standard object tracking mechanism is used that allows users to distribute to other individuals multiple encrypted objects embedded in a single encrypted object. By effecting compartmentalization of every object by label attributes and algorithm attributes, multi-level multimedia security is achieved. Label attributes are used to restrict access to objects based on location, group, or other criteria and may specify personal access. Access type, such as read-only, write-only, and print-only may be specified. Nested embedded objects may be accessed directly through selection from a header array.