Showing papers on "Upload published in 2011"

Proofs of ownership in remote storage systems

Abstract: Cloud storage systems are becoming increasingly popular. A promising technology that keeps their cost down is deduplication, which stores only a single copy of repeating data. Client-side deduplication attempts to identify deduplication opportunities already at the client and save the bandwidth of uploading copies of existing files to the server. In this work we identify attacks that exploit client-side deduplication, allowing an attacker to gain access to arbitrary-size files of other users based on a very small hash signatures of these files. More specifically, an attacker who knows the hash signature of a file can convince the storage service that it owns that file, hence the server lets the attacker download the entire file. (In parallel to our work, a subset of these attacks were recently introduced in the wild with respect to the Dropbox file synchronization service.) To overcome such attacks, we introduce the notion of proofs-of-ownership (PoWs), which lets a client efficiently prove to a server that that the client holds a file, rather than just some short information about it. We formalize the concept of proof-of-ownership, under rigorous security definitions, and rigorous efficiency requirements of Petabyte scale storage systems. We then present solutions based on Merkle trees and specific encodings, and analyze their security. We implemented one variant of the scheme. Our performance measurements indicate that the scheme incurs only a small overhead compared to naive client-side deduplication.

Dark clouds on the horizon: using cloud storage as attack vector and online slack space

Abstract: During the past few years, a vast number of online file storage services have been introduced. While several of these services provide basic functionality such as uploading and retrieving files by a specific user, more advanced services offer features such as shared folders, real-time collaboration, minimization of data transfers or unlimited storage space. Within this paper we give an overview of existing file storage services and examine Dropbox, an advanced file storage solution, in depth. We analyze the Dropbox client software as well as its transmission protocol, show weaknesses and outline possible attack vectors against users. Based on our results we show that Dropbox is used to store copyright-protected files from a popular filesharing network. Furthermore Dropbox can be exploited to hide files in the cloud with unlimited storage capacity. We define this as online slack space. We conclude by discussing security improvements for modern online storage services in general, and Dropbox in particular. To prevent our attacks cloud storage operators should employ data possession proofs on clients, a technique which has been recently discussed only in the context of assessing trust in cloud storage operators.

Mobile web protection

Abstract: On a mobile communications device, visiting a link from a messaging application or web browser may result in an undesired action, such as visiting a phishing site, downloading malware, causing unwanted charges, using too much battery, or the device being exploited In an implementation, a mobile application intercepts a request including an identifier associated with an action to be performed by another application on the device and evaluates the identifier to determine when the request should be permitted, blocked, or conditionally permitted The client may use local data or make a request to a server to evaluate the identifier In an implementation, server communications are optimized to minimize latency by caching evaluation results on the device, proactively priming the device's DNS cache, optimizing when DNS lookups are performed, and adapting evaluation policy based on factors such as the source of the request, and the currently active network connection

Media fingerprinting for content determination and retrieval

Abstract: Audio fingerprinting and other media matching technologies can be used to identify broadcast media, such as television shows and radio broadcasts. A user device can record image, audio, and/or video information and upload information to a matching service that is able to use matching technology to identify the media and provide supplemental content or information to the user. The user might receive information identifying a product in an advertisement, identifying an actor on screen in a movie at a particular time, or other such information. In some embodiments, the user can receive access to a digital copy of the captured media, such as the ability to download a copy of a program in which a user expressed interest. Since a user might capture media information after the point of interest, a device can buffer a window of recently captured media in order to attempt to identify the intended media.

Demand forecast and performance prediction in peer-assisted on-demand streaming systems

Abstract: Peer-assisted on-demand video streaming services are extremely large-scale distributed systems on the Internet. Automated demand forecast and performance prediction, if implemented, can help with capacity planning and quality control so that sufficient server bandwidth can always be supplied to each video channel without incurring wastage. In this paper, we use time-series analysis techniques to automatically predict the online population, the peer upload and the server bandwidth demand in each video channel, based on the learning of both human factors and system dynamics from online measurements. The proposed mechanisms are evaluated on a large dataset collected from a commercial Internet video-on-demand system.

Privacy and accountability for location-based aggregate statistics

Abstract: A significant and growing class of location-based mobile applications aggregate position data from individual devices at a server and compute aggregate statistics over these position streams. Because these devices can be linked to the movement of individuals, there is significant danger that the aggregate computation will violate the location privacy of individuals. This paper develops and evaluates PrivStats, a system for computing aggregate statistics over location data that simultaneously achieves two properties: first, provable guarantees on location privacy even in the face of any side information about users known to the server, and second, privacy-preserving accountability (i.e., protection against abusive clients uploading large amounts of spurious data). PrivStats achieves these properties using a new protocol for uploading and aggregating data anonymously as well as an efficient zero-knowledge proof of knowledge protocol we developed from scratch for accountability. We implemented our system on Nexus One smartphones and commodity servers. Our experimental results demonstrate that PrivStats is a practical system: computing a common aggregate (e.g., count) over the data of 10,000 clients takes less than 0.46 s at the server and the protocol has modest latency (0.6 s) to upload data from a Nexus phone. We also validated our protocols on real driver traces from the CarTel project.

Characterizing Web-Based Video Sharing Workloads

Abstract: Video sharing services that allow ordinary Web users to upload video clips of their choice and watch video clips uploaded by others have recently become very popular. This article identifies invariants in video sharing workloads, through comparison of the workload characteristics of four popular video sharing services. Our traces contain metadata on approximately 1.8 million videos which together have been viewed approximately 6 billion times. Using these traces, we study the similarities and differences in use of several Web 2.0 features such as ratings, comments, favorites, and propensity of uploading content. In general, we find that active contribution, such as video uploading and rating of videos, is much less prevalent than passive use. While uploaders in general are skewed with respect to the number of videos they upload, the fraction of multi-time uploaders is found to differ by a factor of two between two of the sites. The distributions of lifetime measures of video popularity are found to have heavy-tailed forms that are similar across the four sites. Finally, we consider implications for system design of the identified invariants. To gain further insight into caching in video sharing systems, and the relevance to caching of lifetime popularity measures, we gathered an additional dataset tracking views to a set of approximately 1.3 million videos from one of the services, over a twelve-week period. We find that lifetime popularity measures have some relevance for large cache (hot set) sizes (i.e., a hot set defined according to one of these measures is indeed relatively “hot”), but that this relevance substantially decreases as cache size decreases, owing to churn in video popularity.

Social Networking Timeline System And Method

Abstract: The Social Networking Timeline System allows individual timeline authors to record their life histories via online timelines and to upload, store, and share personal history information to a remote database that records, stores, and parses their timeline data, preferably over the Internet. Authors are able to connect to other authors thus establishing social connections. These connections are characterized upon the historical overlaps between all parties based upon their inputs, including but not limited to where they were, what they were doing, what their physical condition was, who their associates were, what things they affiliated with, what their beliefs were, and what events they were close to (manmade or natural) at particular points in time. Further, the information created is searchable (anonymized or not) and connections may be requested between persons with shared historical characteristics.

Social networking website & web-based system for collecting & presenting real-time user generated information on parties & events.

Abstract: This invention is a social networking website & web-based system that allows users to post ‘party reports’—detailed, real-time information about current ongoing parties and events that they know of; allows users to comment and upload pictures & videos on the posted information in real-time; and presents this information in an organized fashion—by city, school or location, by date & time, or by both. The system also contains algorithms used to determine the top or best party cities, schools or locations based on predetermined formulas & user posted information. The website also allows users to connect with other registered users on the website and define them as their ‘peeps’ as well as create ‘crews’, which are close-knit groups of people that they usually party to go out with.

Media fingerprinting for social networking

Abstract: Audio fingerprinting and other media matching technologies can be used to identify media, such as movies, television shows, and radio broadcasts. A user device can record image, audio, and/or video information and upload information to a matching service that is able to use matching technology to identify the media and provide supplemental content or information to the user. The user then can share this information with other users, such as by uploading to a social networking site or passing the information to peers on a peer network as part of a container. Users can have the ability to add tagged content, provide comments and ratings, and otherwise interact based at least in part upon the tagged media content.

Cloud storage file transfer protocol (CFTP)

Abstract: The invention discloses a novel cloud storage file transfer protocol (CFTP), which is a method for transferring files with a user terminal by using a cloud terminal provided with a cloud computation or storage environment, wherein after a terminal sends a file transfer request, a target file is split into a plurality of data blocks to be sent to a storage node of the cloud terminal for caching, a cloud terminal server is used for calculating out an optimum path and sending the optimum path to the terminal, and the user terminal acquires optimum download and upload speeds.

Configuring network settings using portable storage media

Abstract: A portable computer-readable media device and method of use enable automatic configuration of a computing device, such as a conventional network device or a thin client device, for operation in a network. Configuration information, including network settings and security information, is incorporated in an XML file written to the portable media device while it is installed in a first device. This configuration is then automatically transferred to a second device by installing the portable media device in the second device. The second device then writes device information, incorporated in an XML file, to the portable media device, to be uploaded to the first device.

YouProve: authenticity and fidelity in mobile sensing

Abstract: As more services have come to rely on sensor data such as audio and photos collected by mobile phone users, verifying the authenticity of this data has become critical for service correctness. At the same time, clients require the flexibility to tradeoff the fidelity of the data they contribute for resource efficiency or privacy. This paper describes YouProve, a partnership between a mobile device's trusted hardware and software that allows untrusted client applications to directly control the fidelity of data they upload and services to verify that the meaning of source data is preserved. The key to our approach is trusted analysis of derived data, which generates statements comparing the content of a derived data item to its source. Experiments with a prototype implementation for Android demonstrate that YouProve is feasible. Our photo analyzer is over 99% accurate at identifying regions changed only through meaning-preserving modifications such as cropping, compression, and scaling. Our audio analyzer is similarly accurate at detecting which sub-clips of a source audio clip are present in a derived version, even in the face of compression, normalization, splicing, and other modifications. Finally, performance and power costs are reasonable, with analyzers having little noticeable effect on interactive applications and CPU-intensive analysis completing asynchronously in under 70 seconds for 5-minute audio clips and under 30 seconds for 5-megapixel photos.

Mobile phone comprising a streaming server with activation means for activating downloading of a file for streaming thereof

Abstract: A mobile phone is provided. The mobile phone includes a first buffer memory, a downloader for downloading a data file from a web server in the first buffer memory, the file being accessible at a web address on the web server, the downloader being connected to the first buffer memory, and a streaming server for streaming data to a remote client equipment according to a predetermined network protocol, the streaming server being connected to the first buffer memory. The streaming server is adapted to be connected to the remote client equipment via a data link and is adapted to receive, from the remote client equipment, a data streaming request. The streaming server includes an activater for activating the downloader, the activater being adapted to activate the downloading of the data file.

Systems and methods for data upload and download

Abstract: Systems and methods which provide a hybrid network based solution for digital data file backup are shown. Embodiments utilize a transport mass storage system to provide transmission of digital data files between user equipment and a network based mass storage system. A manifest may be used to manage transporting and/or storage of digital data files. User equipment may then access the digital data files stored to the network mass storage system for various purposes using a network link. Subsequent, incremental backups and other transfers of relatively small amounts of digital data files are preferably accomplished using a network link for the transfer.

Composited Posting Interface for Social Networking System

Abstract: In one embodiment, in response to a user's request to upload a photo to a social networking system, a client process accesses information in the user's current location and friends who may be with the user, present the information to the user in a composited posting user interface. After the user confirms a particular current location and a first and second friends who are currently with the user, the client process tags the particular current location and the first and second friends to the photo, and submit to the social networking system a primary posting request in photo upload, and a secondary posting request to check in the user, the first friend and the second friend to the particular current location.

Universal User Interface App and Server

Abstract: A method and system for universal user interface is provided. The method comprises steps for downloading from a web server and installing a universal user interface App software (UUIA) to a mobile device of a user, the user's indicating a type of a connected device on the UUIA, the mobile device's being connected to a web server, the user's identifying the connected device on the UUIA, the web server's searching a database to retrieve and install a driver for the connected device, the user's selecting the type of the connected device on the UUIA, and the UUIA's providing a universal user interface for the connected device on the mobile device.

Method for downloading media file in content distribution network and client

Abstract: The invention discloses a method for downloading a media file in a content distribution network and a client. By means of method, the client can normally receive a service when a bandwidth changes, and burden is not brought to file management; and the method is easy to implement. The media file is partitioned into a plurality of virtual fragments according to fixed duration. The method comprises the following steps: the client downloads the primary index of media contents requested by a user for broadcasting, from a server, wherein secondary index addresses for media files at different code rates in specific to the media contents are recorded in the primary index; the client selects a code rate and downloads the secondary index of a media file at the selected code rate from the server according to the contents of the primary index, wherein the secondary index comprises the first address of the media file and time information relevant to the virtual segments in the media file; and the client downloads a corresponding media file from the server according to the secondary index and records the quantity of downloaded virtual segments according to the time information in a media file downloading process.

Seamlessly overlaying 2D images in 3D model

Abstract: The present disclosure provides techniques that can enable a community of users to upload arbitrary images of particular locations and integrate them into a 3D model of that location in such a way that they appear as correctly aligned overlays with the model. Users can estimate rough location, orientation, and field of view, for one or more images and then add metadata such as keyword “tags” including time parameters. From the user estimates, a computer system determines the pose of the image relative to the 3D model and stores the metadata. A display system enables a community of users to freely navigate through the 3D model with visual indicators of all of the posed images, filterable via the metadata. Users also have control over a “snap-to-view” feature as they approach any of the posed images as well as a transparency feature for the degree of visibility of the overlaid image.

System, computer program, and method for online, real-time delivery of consumer tax services

Abstract: A system, a method, and a computer program for performing an online, real-time tax consultation for preparation of a client's taxes by a tax agent, wherein the tax agent is remote from the client, and the system is implemented via an electronic, online application accessible via a communications network. Embodiments allow for a client desiring tax preparation of a tax return to initiate the tax preparation with a tax agent via an online, integrated platform; electronically upload or otherwise push the client's tax-related information and documents to the tax agent; participate in an online tax consultation so that the tax agent may investigate, learn, or otherwise obtain the tax information necessary for completing the client's tax return; and electronically approve and file the completed tax return.

Remote medical information acquisition system

Abstract: The invention provides a remote medical information acquisition system and belongs to the technical field of information acquisition. The system is based on a wireless communication network formed by an existing wireless network and a portable communication device and is implemented through the following steps: arranging a mobile terminal application program and a far-end server scheduler program on a remote server; arranging an external information acquisition unit on the portable communication device; enabling the portable communication device to download and run a remote medical system mobile terminal application program; and intelligently selecting and outputting information guide by virtue of built-in software so as to assist non-medical staff to observe according to a specified sequence/method and imitate the diagnosis process of a clinician, carrying out information/characteristic acquisition on various characteristics of a patient according to medical standards, so as to generate original electronic physiological data, and then splitting/packaging/uploading the original electronic physiological data to a designated server. The system can guarantee the integrity and pertinence of information to the largest extent, is low in installation and operation cost, is easy to realize, and is suitable for information acquisition field for various remote medical treatment /healthcare/nursing/monitoring systems.

Automatic creation of photo books from stories in social media

Abstract: Photos are a special way to tell stories of our best memories and moments. The representation of those photos in appealing physical photo books is highly appreciated by many people. Today, many photos are shared via social networking sites, where people upload their photos and share their stories with their friends. The members of social networks comment on each other's photos, add tags or descriptions and upload new photos of the same events to their albums. While the media of different personal events are available on the social network, there is no easy way to collect and bundle them into a story and print this story as a photo book. We propose an approach to automatically detect media elements that match a query (where, when, what, who) in the user's social network and intelligently arrange and compose them into a printable photo book. We combine content analysis of text and images to automatically and semi-automatically select photos of a specific story. We calculate the probabilities of each two photos to belong to the same event using an Expectation-Maximization algorithm that we propose in order to be able to retrieve them easily when receiving the user queries, and we address the differences between our model and other models that use similar proposed algorithms. People's tags and the interaction between the users and the photos as well as other semantic information are exploited to select important photos that are suitable to create the photo book. The selected photos and derived semantics are then employed to automatically create an appealing layout for the photo book.

Batch uploading of content to a web-based collaboration environment

Abstract: Systems and methods of batch uploading of content to a web-based collaboration environment are disclosed. In one aspect, embodiments of the present disclosure include a method, which may be implemented on a system, for receiving an upload request from a user through a user interface to upload multiple items and sequentially uploading each of the multiple items to the host server. In one embodiment, the user is able to navigate away from the user interface through which the upload request was submitted prior to completion of the uploading of each of the multiple items to the host server. In addition, the upload of the multiple items is not interrupted if the user accesses a link on the user interface causing another user interface to launch in a browser.

Proofs of Ownership in Remote Storage Systems.

Abstract: Cloud storage systems are becoming increasingly popular. A promising technology that keeps their cost down is deduplication, which stores only a single copy of repeating data. Client-side deduplication attempts to identify deduplication opportunities already at the client and save the bandwidth of uploading copies of existing files to the server. In this work we identify attacks that exploit client-side deduplication, allowing an attacker to gain access to arbitrary-size files of other users based on a very small hash signatures of these files. More specifically, an attacker who knows the hash signature of a file can convince the storage service that it owns that file, hence the server lets the attacker download the entire file. (In parallel to our work, a subset of these attacks were recently introduced in the wild with respect to the Dropbox file synchronization service.) To overcome such attacks, we introduce the notion of proofs-ofownership (PoWs), which lets a client efficiently prove to a server that that the client holds a file, rather than just some short information about it. We formalize the concept of proof-of-ownership, under rigorous security definitions, and rigorous efficiency requirements of Petabyte scale storage systems. We then present solutions based on Merkle trees and specific encodings, and analyze their security. We implemented one variant of the scheme. Our performance measurements indicate that the scheme incurs only a small overhead compared to naive client-side deduplication.

Synchronization of networked storage systems and third party systems

Abstract: Disclosed are various embodiments for the synchronizing of files between a networked storage system and a third party system. A file can be stored in a storage location in a networked storage system. A determination can be whether the storage location is associated with a third party system. An authentication credential can be retrieved that is associated with the third party system. Upload of the file to the third party system can be initiated.

Cloud service-based method and device of interconnection address books

Abstract: The invention provides a cloud service-based method and a cloud service-based device of interconnection address books. By using the method and the device, a user uploads personal updated contact information to a cloud server terminal; the cloud server terminal acquires the updated contact information of the user, automatically updates old information, and stores the updated information after updating; then the cloud server sends update notifications to other users containing the contact information of the user to ensure that the contact information is updated in time and ensure the synchronism of the contact information; besides, the cloud server stores the contact information in a rigorous 'cloud' terminal of an equipment advanced system to ensure that the contact information cannot be lost due to the loss and damage of hardware and is also protected from being destroyed by viruses.

Cloud storage service client high-efficiency fine-granularity data caching system and method

Abstract: The invention discloses a cloud storage service client high-efficiency fine-granularity data caching system. The system comprises an application program module, a file system module, a server, a virtual network storage module, local mobile storage equipment and a user-mode file system module, wherein the user-mode file system module of a client intercepts reading and writing operation of mobile equipment; judgment is made according to a content of the reading and writing operation; if the read content is locally cached, the content is read out from a local sparse file; if the content is not locally cached, data is requested from a server according to the size of the reading and writing operation and the written data is directly input in a local cache; and a synchronizing thread checks a local data sheet to be synchronized and uploads the data newly written into the client to the server. The invention has the advantage of quickly and efficiently accessing a file in cloud storage under the condition of limited network bandwidth resources.

Method for constructing data quanta space in network and distributed file storage system

Abstract: The invention relates to a method for constructing data quantum space in the network and a distributed file storage system. Through the distributed file storage system, user nodes use service nodes to choose and upload file blocks of the data files onto usable user nodes in the network so as to form distributed nodes; after the user nodes upload the file blcoks of data files or during the transmission of the file blocks of data files, the service nodes automatically adjust the usable nodes in the whole backbone node network to distribute loading tasks, and distribute the file blocks of the data files that the user requests to upload or transmit and store in the sharing space of a plurality of user nodes through copy, so as to form a plurality of sharing nodes for the user nodes download or transmission of files, thereby constructing and forming the quantum space for data storage and transmission in the network. The invention can realize stable, high efficient and opening enterprise-level distributed storage application.

System and method for creating and sharing personalized fonts on a client/server architecture

Abstract: The present invention concerns a method allowing an author to create a bitmap font and distributing it to at least an user's device connected to a server (2), comprising the steps of: drawing on an author's device and/or importing (5) in the author's device an image comprising at least one glyph; segmentation (6) of the image by the said author's device, in order to isolate the glyph or the different glyphs; uploading the bitmap file resulting of this segmentation (6) to the server (2); displaying (34) a text on said user's device, said text being rendered with a font depending on said bitmap file. The present invention relates also to a system and a computer program product for creating and sharing personalized font on a client- server architecture.