Using algebraic signatures to check data possession in cloud storage

Cloud storage enables users to access their data anywhere and at any time. It also can comply with a growing number of regulations. However, it brings about many new security challenges. When users store their data in cloud storage, they are mostly concerned about whether the data is intact. This is the goal of remote data possession checking (RDPC) schemes. This paper proposes an algebraic signature based RDPC scheme. Algebraic signature can improve efficiency and the running of algebraic signature can achieve tens to hundreds of megabytes per second. It allows verification without the need for the challenger to compare against the original data. The challenge/response protocol transmits a small, constant amount of data. The user needs to store only two secret keys and several random numbers. The algebraic property of algebraic signatures makes it possible to propose an efficient challenge updating method. Finally, experimental results reveal that the performance is bound by disk I/O and not by the algebraic signature and cryptographic computation, which enables it to be ideally suited for use in cloud storage. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.