Skip to main content

DeCStor: A Framework for Privately and Securely Sharing Files Using a Public Blockchain

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Discovery Science (DS 2020)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 12323))

Included in the following conference series:

  • 1381 Accesses

Abstract

Cloud services have become increasingly popular during the past few years. Through these services, users can store their data remotely and access them any time and from anywhere. These services are offered by centralized systems where an organization or company usually offers their resources to users. The centralized nature of these systems causes several problems; a single point of failure exists, security issues might provide unwarranted access to intruders and there are privacy issues to consider as well. A solution to these problems is the decentralization of the system. A core technology that can help in this respect is the blockchain. It does not require any centralized control and its security model is based on the nodes of the blockchain network to share and verify transactions. This work aims to develop a secure decentralized cloud service, which does not expose the users’ personal data. To this effect, a framework that implements a cloud service using the Ethereum blockchain ecosystem and the Swarm decentralized storage platform was developed. In this, file access is provided through user-specific decryption keys. By developing a decentralized cloud, using a secure encryption model for the data, a service which is more secure, and where the users have full control over their data is possible.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 79.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 99.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    https://gitlab.com/datalab-auth/blockchain/decstor.

References

  1. IPFS: a peer-to-peer hypermedia protocol designed to make the web faster, safer, and more open. https://ipfs.io/. Accessed 29 May 2020

  2. Metamask: a crypto wallet & gateway to blockchain apps. https://metamask.io. Accessed 21 May 2020

  3. Sia: decentralized storage for the post-cloud world. https://sia.tech/. Accessed 28 May 2020

  4. Storj decentralized cloud storage. https://storj.io. Accessed 28 May 2020

  5. Swarm: storage and communication for a sovereign digital society. https://swarm.ethereum.org/. Accessed 22 May 2020

  6. web3js: Ethereum javascript api. https://web3js.readthedocs.io. Accessed 25 May 2020

  7. Announcing the advanced encryption standard (aes). Federal Information Processing Standards Publication 197. United States National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), November 2001. https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/FIPS/NIST.FIPS.197.pdf

  8. Solidity. https://solidity.readthedocs.io (2020). Accessed 08 May 2020

  9. Adams, C., Lloyd, S.: Understanding PKI: concepts, standards, and deployment considerations. Addison-Wesley Professional (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Benet, J.: IPFS - Content Addressed, Versioned, P2P File System. arXiv e-prints arXiv:1407.3561, July 2014

  11. Buterin, V.: A next-generation smart contract and decentralized application platform-ethereum whitepaper, 2014 (2014). https://www.weusecoins.com/assets/pdf/library/Ethereum_white_paper-a_next_generation_smart_contract_and_decentralized_application_platform-vitalik-buterin.pdf. Accessed 24 May 2020

  12. De Capitani di Vimercati, S., Foresti, S., Samarati, P.: Managing and accessing data in the cloud: Privacy risks and approaches. In: 2012 7th International Conference on Risks and Security of Internet and Systems (CRiSIS), pp. 1–9 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Dhillon, V., Metcalf, D., Hooper, M.: Unpacking Ethereum, pp. 25–45. Apress, Berkeley, CA (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-3081-7_4

  14. Faraj Al-Janabi, S.T., Abd-alrazzaq, H.K.: Combining mediated and identity-based cryptography for securing E-mail. In: Ariwa, E., El-Qawasmeh, E. (eds.) DEIS 2011. CCIS, vol. 194, pp. 1–15. Springer, Heidelberg (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-22603-8_1

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  15. Ion, I., Sachdeva, N., Kumaraguru, P., ÄŚapkun, S.: Home is safer than the cloud! privacy concerns for consumer cloud storage. In: Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security. SOUPS 2011, Association for Computing Machinery, New York (2011). https://doi.org/10.1145/2078827.2078845

  16. Ka, S., Jayanthi, S.: A review on cloud data security and its mitigation techniques. Procedia Comput. Sci. 48, 347–352 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Kamara, S., Lauter, K.: Cryptographic cloud storage. In: Sion, R., Curtmola, R., Dietrich, S., Kiayias, A., Miret, J.M., Sako, K., Sebé, F. (eds.) FC 2010. LNCS, vol. 6054, pp. 136–149. Springer, Heidelberg (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-14992-4_13

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  18. Kaur, M., Singh, H.: A review of cloud computing security issues. Int. J. Educ. Manag. Eng. 5, 32–41 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Li, D., Du, R., Fu, Y., Au, M.H.: Meta-key: a secure data-sharing protocol under blockchain-based decentralized storage architecture. IEEE Netw. Lett. 1(1), 30–33 (2019)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Li, J., Wu, J., Chen, L.: Block-secure: blockchain based scheme for secure p2p cloud storage. Inf. Sci. 465, 219–231 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ins.2018.06.071

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Liang, X., Shetty, S., Tosh, D., Kamhoua, C., Kwiat, K., Njilla, L.: Provchain: a blockchain-based data provenance architecture in cloud environment with enhanced privacy and availability. In: 2017 17th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud and Grid Computing (CCGRID), pp. 468–477 (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  22. Mell, P., Grance, T.: The NIST definition of cloud computing. NIST Special Publication, pp. 800–145 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Nakamoto, S.: Bitcoin: a peer-to-peer electronic cash system (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Nechvatal, J.: Public-key cryptography. Technical Report NIST Special Publication 800–2, National Institute of Standards & Technology, Research Information Center, Gaithersburg, MD 20899 (1991)

    Google Scholar 

  25. Nizamuddin, N., Salah, K., Azad, M.A., Arshad, J., Rehman, M.: Decentralized document version control using ethereum blockchain and IPFS. Comput. Electr. Eng. 76, 183–197 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compeleceng.2019.03.014

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Pearson, S.: Taking account of privacy when designing cloud computing services. In: 2009 ICSE Workshop on Software Engineering Challenges of Cloud Computing, pp. 44–52 (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  27. Pearson, S.: Privacy, security and trust in cloud computing. In: Pearson, S., Yee, G. (eds.) Privacy and Security for Cloud Computing. CCN, pp. 3–42. Springer, London (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-4189-1_1

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  28. Peng, Y., Zhao, W., Xie, F., Dai, Z.H., Gao, Y., Chen, D.Q.: Secure cloud storage based on cryptographic techniques. J. China Univ. Posts Telecommun. 19, 182–189 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1016/S1005-8885(11)60424-X

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Rivest, R.L., Shamir, A., Adleman, L.: A method for obtaining digital signatures and public-key cryptosystems. Commun. ACM 21(2), 120–126 (1978). https://doi.org/10.1145/359340.359342

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  30. Soghoian, C.: Caught in the cloud: privacy, encryption, and government back doors in the web 2.0 era. J. Telecommun. High Technol. Law 8, 359 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  31. Takabi, H., Joshi, J.B.D., Ahn, G.: Security and privacy challenges in cloud computing environments. IEEE Secur. Privacy 8(6), 24–31 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. Vacca, J.R.: Public Key Infrastructure: Building Trusted Applications and Web Services. CRC Press, Boca Raton (2004)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  33. Xiao, Z., Xiao, Y.: Security and privacy in cloud computing. IEEE Commun. Surv. Tutorials 15(2), 843–859 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  34. Zhou, M., Zhang, R., Xie, W., Qian, W., Zhou, A.: Security and privacy in cloud computing: a survey. In: 2010 Sixth International Conference on Semantics, Knowledge and Grids, pp. 105–112 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgement

This research has been co-financed by the European Union H2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreements No. 826404 and No 871403.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to George Vlahavas .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Siopi, M., Vlahavas, G., Karasavvas, K., Vakali, A. (2020). DeCStor: A Framework for Privately and Securely Sharing Files Using a Public Blockchain. In: Appice, A., Tsoumakas, G., Manolopoulos, Y., Matwin, S. (eds) Discovery Science. DS 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12323. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61527-7_19

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61527-7_19

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-61526-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-61527-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics