In this paper, we define and explore proofs of retrievability (PORs). A POR scheme enables an archive or back-up service (prover) to produce a concise proof that a user (verifier) can retrieve a target file F, that is, that the archive retains and reliably transmits file data sufficient for the user to recover F in its entirety.A POR may be viewed as a kind of cryptographic proof of knowledge (POK), but one specially designed to handle a large file (or bitstring) F. We explore POR protocols here in which the communication costs, number of memory accesses for the prover, and storage requirements of the user (verifier) are small parameters essentially independent of the length of F. In addition to proposing new, practical POR constructions, we explore implementation considerations and optimizations that bear on previously explored, related schemes.In a POR, unlike a POK, neither the prover nor the verifier need actually have knowledge of F. PORs give rise to a new and unusual security definition whose formulation is another contribution of our work.We view PORs as an important tool for semi-trusted online archives. Existing cryptographic techniques help users ensure the privacy and integrity of files they retrieve. It is also natural, however, for users to want to verify that archives do not delete or modify files prior to retrieval. The goal of a POR is to accomplish these checks without users having to download the files themselves. A POR can also provide quality-of-service guarantees, i.e., show that a file is retrievable within a certain time bound.

PORs: Proofs of Retrievability for Large Files

Examples are discussed to show the differences among discriminant analysis, logistic regression, and multiple regression. Chapter 6, “Multivariate Analysis of Variance,” presents advantages of multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) over univariate analysis of variance (ANOVA), discusses assumptions of MANOVA, and assesses validations of MANOVA assumptions and model estimation. The authors also discuss post hoc tests of MANOVA and multivariate analysis of covariance. Chapter 7, “Conjoint Analysis,” explains what conjoint analysis does and how it is different from other multivariate techniques. Guidelines of selecting attributes, models, and methods of data collection are presented. Chapter 8, “Cluster Analysis,” studies objectives, roles, and limitations of cluster analysis. Two basic concepts: similarity and distance are discussed. The authors also discuss details of five most popular hierarchical algorithms (singlelinkage, complete-linkage, average-linkage, centroid method, Ward’s method) and three nonhierarchical algorithms (the sequential threshold method, the parallel threshold method, and the optimizing procedure). Profiles of clusters and guidelines for cluster validation are studied as well. Chapter 9, “Multidimensional Scaling and Correspondence Analysis,” introduces two interdependence techniques to display the relationships in the data. The book describes clearly and intuitively the differences between the two techniques and how these two techniques are performed. Chapters 10–12 cover topics in SEM. Chapter 10, “Structural Equation Modeling: An Introduction,” introduces SEM and related concepts such as exogenous, endogenous constructs, and so on, points out the differences between SEM and other multivariate techniques, overviews the decision process of SEM. Chapter 11, “Confirmatory Factor Analysis,” explains the differences between exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, discusses how to construct, validate, and assess the goodness of fit of a measurement model in SEM by confirmatory factor analysis. Chapter 12, “Testing a Structural Model,” presents some methods of SEM in examining the relationships between latent constructs. The book is an excellent book for people in management and marketing. For the Technometrics audience, this book does not have much flavor of physical, chemical, and engineering sciences. For example, partial least squares, a very popular method in Chemometrics, is discussed but not as detailed as other techniques in the book. Furthermore, due to the amount of materials covered in the book, it might be inappropriate for someone who is new to multivariate analysis.

The Grammar of Graphics

With cloud storage services, users can remotely store their data to the cloud and realize the data sharing with others. Remote data integrity auditing is proposed to guarantee the integrity of the data stored in the cloud. In some common cloud storage systems such as the electronic health records system, the cloud file might contain some sensitive information. The sensitive information should not be exposed to others when the cloud file is shared. Encrypting the whole shared file can realize the sensitive information hiding, but will make this shared file unable to be used by others. How to realize data sharing with sensitive information hiding in remote data integrity auditing still has not been explored up to now. In order to address this problem, we propose a remote data integrity auditing scheme that realizes data sharing with sensitive information hiding in this paper. In this scheme, a sanitizer is used to sanitize the data blocks corresponding to the sensitive information of the file and transforms these data blocks’ signatures into valid ones for the sanitized file. These signatures are used to verify the integrity of the sanitized file in the phase of integrity auditing. As a result, our scheme makes the file stored in the cloud able to be shared and used by others on the condition that the sensitive information is hidden, while the remote data integrity auditing is still able to be efficiently executed. Meanwhile, the proposed scheme is based on identity-based cryptography, which simplifies the complicated certificate management. The security analysis and the performance evaluation show that the proposed scheme is secure and efficient.

/pdf/enabling-identity-based-integrity-auditing-and-data-sharing-2rak9z9x4y.pdf

Enabling Identity-Based Integrity Auditing and Data Sharing With Sensitive Information Hiding for Secure Cloud Storage

Blockchain-based publicly verifiable data deletion scheme for cloud storage

Cloud storage auditing schemes for shared data refer to checking the integrity of cloud data shared by a group of users. User revocation is commonly supported in such schemes, as users may be subject to group membership changes for various reasons. Previously, the computational overhead for user revocation in such schemes is linear with the total number of file blocks possessed by a revoked user. The overhead, however, may become a heavy burden because of the sheer amount of the shared cloud data. Thus, how to reduce the computational overhead caused by user revocations becomes a key research challenge for achieving practical cloud data auditing. In this paper, we propose a novel storage auditing scheme that achieves highly-efficient user revocation independent of the total number of file blocks possessed by the revoked user in the cloud. This is achieved by exploring a novel strategy for key generation and a new private key update technique. Using this strategy and the technique, we realize user revocation by just updating the non-revoked group users’ private keys rather than authenticators of the revoked user. The integrity auditing of the revoked user's data can still be correctly performed when the authenticators are not updated. Meanwhile, the proposed scheme is based on identity-base cryptography, which eliminates the complicated certificate management in traditional Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) systems. The security and efficiency of the proposed scheme are validated via both analysis and experimental results.

Enabling Efficient User Revocation in Identity-Based Cloud Storage Auditing for Shared Big Data

Searchable encryption is an important and challenging issue. It allows people to search on encrypted data. This is a very useful function when more and more people choose to host their data in the cloud and the cloud server is not fully trustable. Existing solutions for searchable encryption are only limited to some simple functions of search, such as boolean search or similarity search. In this paper, we propose a scheme for Generalized Pattern-matching String-search on Encrypted data (GPSE) in cloud systems. GPSE allows users to specify their search queries by using generalized wildcard-based string patterns (such as SQL-like patterns). It gives users great expressive power in specifying highly targeted search queries. In the framework of GPSE, we particularly implemented two most commonly used pattern matching search functions on encrypted data, the substring matching and the longest-prefix-first matching. We also prove that GPSE is secure under the known-plaintext model. Experiments over real data sets show that GPSE achieves high search accuracy.

/pdf/generalized-pattern-matching-string-search-on-encrypted-data-3mmdmr3yz3.pdf

Generalized pattern matching string search on encrypted data in cloud systems

Efficient auditing for shared data in the cloud with secure user revocation and computations outsourcing

Solving large-scale systems of linear equations (L-SLE) is a common scientific and engineering computational task. But such problem involves enormous computing resources, which is burdensome for the resource-limited clients. Cloud computing enables computational resource-limited clients to economically outsource such problems to the cloud server. However, outsourcing LSLE to the cloud brings great security concerns and challenges since the LSLE usually contains sensitive information. Previous works for secure outsourcing LSLE are mainly based on iterative methods which cause heavy computation cost for the client side. And they usually neglect to protect the number and position privacy of zero elements in the coefficient matrix, which is not secure enough for many applications. In this paper, with a series of disguise-based techniques, we propose a new efficient and non-iterative algorithm for securely outsourcing LSLE. Our algorithm only requires two rounds of communication between the client and cloud. Furthermore, the number and positions of zero elements in coefficient matrix can be hidden from the cloud with low computational complexity. Finally, we provide extensive theoretical analysis and experimental evaluation to show its high-efficiency and security compared to the previous works.

Efficient, secure and non-iterative outsourcing of large-scale systems of linear equations

With the cloud storage services, users can easily form a group and share data with each other. Given the fact that the cloud is not trustable, users need to compute signatures for blocks of the shared data to allow public integrity auditing. Once a user is revoked from the group, the blocks that were previously signed by this revoked user must be re-signed by an existing user, which may result in heavy communication and computation cost for the user. Proxy re-signatures can be used here to allow the cloud to do the re-signing work on behalf of the group. However, a malicious cloud is able to use the re-signing keys to arbitrarily convert signatures from one user to another deliberately. Moreover, collusions between revoked users and a malicious cloud will disclose the secret values of the existing users. In this paper, we propose a novel public auditing scheme for the integrity of shared data with efficient and collusion-resistant user revocation utilizing the concept of Shamir secret sharing. Besides, our scheme also supports secure and efficient public auditing due to our improved polynomial-based authentication tags. The numerical analysis and experimental results demonstrate that our proposed scheme is provably secure and highly efficient.

Efficient Integrity Auditing for Shared Data in the Cloud with Secure User Revocation

In the cloud storage, users lose direct control over their data. How to surely delete data in the cloud becomes a crucial problem for a secure cloud storage system. The existing way to this problem is to encrypt the data before outsourcing and destroy the encryption key when deleting. However, this solution may cause heavy computation overhead for the user-side and the encrypted data remains intact in the cloud after the deletion operation. To solve this challenge problem, we propose a novel method to surely delete data in the cloud storage by overwriting. Different from existing works, our scheme is efficient in the user-side and is able to wipe out the deleted data from the drives of the cloud servers.

Dongsheng Wang

Papers

Generalized pattern matching string search on encrypted data in cloud systems

Efficient auditing for shared data in the cloud with secure user revocation and computations outsourcing

Efficient, secure and non-iterative outsourcing of large-scale systems of linear equations

Efficient Integrity Auditing for Shared Data in the Cloud with Secure User Revocation

Enabling Assured Deletion in the Cloud Storage by Overwriting