Cloud Computing has been envisioned as the next-generation architecture of IT Enterprise. It moves the application software and databases to the centralized large data centers, where the management of the data and services may not be fully trustworthy. This unique paradigm brings about many new security challenges, which have not been well understood. This work studies the problem of ensuring the integrity of data storage in Cloud Computing. In particular, we consider the task of allowing a third party auditor (TPA), on behalf of the cloud client, to verify the integrity of the dynamic data stored in the cloud. The introduction of TPA eliminates the involvement of the client through the auditing of whether his data stored in the cloud are indeed intact, which can be important in achieving economies of scale for Cloud Computing. The support for data dynamics via the most general forms of data operation, such as block modification, insertion, and deletion, is also a significant step toward practicality, since services in Cloud Computing are not limited to archive or backup data only. While prior works on ensuring remote data integrity often lacks the support of either public auditability or dynamic data operations, this paper achieves both. We first identify the difficulties and potential security problems of direct extensions with fully dynamic data updates from prior works and then show how to construct an elegant verification scheme for the seamless integration of these two salient features in our protocol design. In particular, to achieve efficient data dynamics, we improve the existing proof of storage models by manipulating the classic Merkle Hash Tree construction for block tag authentication. To support efficient handling of multiple auditing tasks, we further explore the technique of bilinear aggregate signature to extend our main result into a multiuser setting, where TPA can perform multiple auditing tasks simultaneously. Extensive security and performance analysis show that the proposed schemes are highly efficient and provably secure.

/pdf/enabling-public-auditability-and-data-dynamics-for-storage-5eqsbiybio.pdf

Enabling Public Auditability and Data Dynamics for Storage Security in Cloud Computing

We study the turbo equalization approach to coded data transmission over channels with intersymbol interference. In the original system invented by Douillard et al. (1995), the data are protected by a convolutional code and the receiver consists of two trellis-based detectors, one for the channel (the equalizer) and one for the code (the decoder). It has been shown that iterating equalization and decoding tasks can yield tremendous improvements in bit error rate. We introduce new approaches to combining equalization based on linear filtering, with decoding.. Through simulation and analytical results, we show that the performance of the new approaches is similar to the trellis-based receiver, while providing large savings in computational complexity. Moreover, this paper provides an overview of the design alternatives for turbo equalization with given system parameters, such as the channel response or the signal-to-noise ratio.

http://www.ifp.illinois.edu/~singer/journalpapers/tuchler_2002a.pdf

Turbo equalization: principles and new results

We investigate the performance and design of free-space optical (FSO) communication links over slow fading channels from an information theory perspective. A statistical model for the optical intensity fluctuation at the receiver due to the combined effects of atmospheric turbulence and pointing errors is derived. Unlike earlier work, our model considers the effect of beam width, detector size, and jitter variance explicitly. Expressions for the outage probability are derived for a variety of atmospheric conditions. For given weather and misalignment conditions, the beam width is optimized to maximize the channel capacity subject to outage. Large gains in achievable rate are realized versus using a nominal beam width. In light fog, by optimizing the beam width, the achievable rate is increased by 80% over the nominal beam width at an outage probability of 10-5. Well-known error control codes are then applied to the channel and shown to realize much of the achievable gains.

/pdf/outage-capacity-optimization-for-free-space-optical-links-1olyt6kze5.pdf

Outage Capacity Optimization for Free-Space Optical Links With Pointing Errors

A number of important advances have been made in the area of joint equalization and decoding of data transmitted over intersymbol interference (ISI) channels. Turbo equalization is an iterative approach to this problem, in which a maximum a posteriori probability (MAP) equalizer and a MAP decoder exchange soft information in the form of prior probabilities over the transmitted symbols. A number of reduced-complexity methods for turbo equalization have been introduced in which MAP equalization is replaced with suboptimal, low-complexity approaches. We explore a number of low-complexity soft-input/soft-output (SISO) equalization algorithms based on the minimum mean square error (MMSE) criterion. This includes the extension of existing approaches to general signal constellations and the derivation of a novel approach requiring less complexity than the MMSE-optimal solution. All approaches are qualitatively analyzed by observing the mean-square error averaged over a sequence of equalized data. We show that for the turbo equalization application, the MMSE-based SISO equalizers perform well compared with a MAP equalizer while providing a tremendous complexity reduction.

http://www.ifp.illinois.edu/~singer/pub_files/Minimum_Mean_Square_Error_Equalization_with_Priors.pdf

Minimum mean squared error equalization using a priori information

Security is one of the most important issues in communications. Security issues arising in communication networks include confidentiality, integrity, authentication and non-repudiation. Attacks on the security of communication networks can be divided into two basic types: passive attacks and active attacks. An active attack corresponds to the situation in which a malicious actor intentionally disrupts the system. A passive attack corresponds to the situation in which a malicious actor attempts to interpret source information without injecting any information or trying to modify the information; i.e., passive attackers listen to the transmission without modifying it. Information Theoretic Security focuses on confidentiality issues, in which passive attacks are of primary concern. The information theoretic approach to achieving secure communication opens a promising new direction toward solving wireless networking security problems. Compared to contemporary cryptosystems, information theoretic approaches offer advantages such as eliminating the key management issue; are less vulnerable to the man-in-the-middle and achieve provable security that is robust to powerful eavesdroppers possessing unlimited computational resources, knowledge of the communication strategy employed including coding and decoding algorithms, and access to communication systems either through perfect or noisy channels. Information Theoretic Security surveys the research dating back to the 1970s which forms the basis of applying this technique in modern systems. It proceeds to provide an overview of how information theoretic approaches are developed to achieve secrecy for a basic wire-tap channel model as well as for its extensions to multiuser networks. It is an invaluable resource for students and researchers working in network security, information theory and communications.

/pdf/information-theoretic-security-zu8sse0y59.pdf

Information Theoretic Security

The basic goal in digital communications is to transport bits of information without losing too much information along the way. The level of information loss that is tolerable/acceptable varies for different applications. The loss is measured in terms of the bit error rate, or BER. An interesting application that employs error control coding is a system with a storage medium such as a hard disk drive or a compact disc (CD). We can think of the channel as a block that causes errors to occur when a signal passes through it. Regardless of the error source, we can describe the problem as follows: when the transmitted signal arrives at the receiver after passing through the channel, the received data will have some bits that are in error. The system designer would like to incorporate ways to detect and correct these errors. The field that covers such digital processing techniques is known as error control coding.

K. Ramaswamy

Papers

Error control coding