Scalable and efficient provable data possession

TLDR

Storage outsourcing is increasingly common, raising security concerns such as untrusted servers that may erase or degrade data, especially for resource‑constrained clients, and Provable Data Possession (PDP) has emerged only recently to address these issues. The study aims to develop a method that allows clients to frequently, efficiently, and securely verify that a storage server faithfully retains their large outsourced data.

Abstract

Storage outsourcing is a rising trend which prompts a number of interesting security issues, many of which have been extensively investigated in the past. However, Provable Data Possession (PDP) is a topic that has only recently appeared in the research literature. The main issue is how to frequently, efficiently and securely verify that a storage server is faithfully storing its client's (potentially very large) outsourced data. The storage server is assumed to be untrusted in terms of both security and reliability. (In other words, it might maliciously or accidentally erase hosted data; it might also relegate it to slow or off-line storage.) The problem is exacerbated by the client being a small computing device with limited resources. Prior work has addressed this problem using either public key cryptography or requiring the client to outsource its data in encrypted form.