An evaluation of security issues in cloud-based file sharing technologies

Cloud computing is one of the most promising technologies for backup and data storage that provides flexible access to data. Cloud computing plays a vital role in remote backup. It is so unfortunate that this computing technique has flaws that thrilled and edgy end users in implementing it effectively. These flaws include factors like lack of integrity, confidentiality and privacy to information. A secure cloud is impossible unless the computer-generated environment is appropriately secured. In any form of technology it is always advisable that security challenges must be prior identified and fixed before the implementation of that particular technology. Primarily, this study will focus on finding security issues in cloud computing with the objective of finding concerns like credential theft and session management in the ―Cloud‖. Main arguments like HTTP banner disclosure, Bash ―ShellShock‖ Injection and password issues were discovered during the stages of study implementation. These challenges may provide information that will permit hackers in manipulating and exploiting cloud environment. Identifying credential theft and session management in cloud-based file sharing technologies a mixed method approach was implemented throughout the course of the study due to the nature of study and unity of analysis. Penetration tests were performed as security testing technique. Prevention and guideline of security threats leads to a friendly and authentic world of technology

Dynamic Access Control In Cloud Computing Using Encryption/Decryption

Cloud computing has emerged as one of the most important paradigms in the IT industry for last few years. In general data owners and service providers are not in the same trusted domain in cloud computing. Service providers should not be a trusted one anyhow they are all third party. The system focuses on a novel technique to Hierarchical Attribute Set Based Encryption (HASBE); it is driven by the Cipher Policy attribute based encryption (CPABE) with a  hierarchic al structure of cloud users. Cloud computing is known as “Utility”. Cloud Computing enabling users to remotely store their data in a server and provide services on demand. Since this new computing technology requires user to entrust their valuable data to cloud providers, there have been increasing security and privacy concerns on outsourced data. We can increase security on access of the data in the cloud. Morever we can provide encryption on the data so third party can not use the data. In this paper we will be reviewing various encryption based access control model for enhancing cloud security along with their limitations. We will be concluding with a proposed access control model to enhance cloud security. The proposed work focuses CRM (Customer Relationship Management) for business model that is driven by the category of Software as a Service (Saas) method in cloud. Using this scheme it achieves the flexible, scalable and fine grained access control of data. It also achieves high secure and effective user revocation in cloud environment.

Treasure Island Security framework : A Generic Security Framework for public clouds

In this thesis we introduce a generic security framework for public clouds called Treasure Island Security framework that is designed to address the issues related to cloud computing security and specifically key-management in untrusted domains. Nowadays many cloud structure and services are provided but as an inevitable concomitant to these new products, security issues increase rapidly. Availability, integrity of data, lack of trust, confidentiality as well as security issues are also of great importance to cloud computing users; they may be more skeptical of the cloud services when they feel that they might lose the control over their data or the structures that the cloud provided for them.   Because of deferred control of data from customers to cloud providers and unknown number of third parties in between, it is almost impossible to apply traditional security methods. We present our security framework, with distributed key and sequential addressing in a simple abstract mode with a master server and adequate number of chunk servers. We assume a fixed chunk size model for large files and sequentially distribution file system with 4 separated key to decrypt/encrypt file. After reviewing the process, we analyze the Distributed Key and Sequentially Addressing Distributed file system and it's Security Risk Model. The focus of this thesis is on increasing security in untrusted domain especially in the cloud key management in public cloud. We discuss cryptographic approaches in key-management and suggest a novel cryptographic method for public cloud's key-management system based on forward-secure public key encryption, which supports a non-interactive publicly verifiable secret sharing scheme through a tree access structure. We believe that Treasure Island Security Framework can provide an increased secure environment in untrusted domains, like public cloud, in which users can securely reconstruct their secret-keys (e.g. lost passphrases). Finally, we discuss the advantages and benefits of Cloud Computing Security Framework with Distributed Key and Sequentially Addressing Distributed file system and cryptographic approaches and how it helps to improve the security levels in cloud systems.  M.S

State of The Art and Hot Aspects in Cloud Data Storage Security

Along with the evolution of cloud computing and cloud storage towards matu- rity, researchers have analyzed an increasing range of cloud computing security aspects, data security being an important topic in this area. In this paper, we examine the state of the art in cloud storage security through an overview of selected peer reviewed publications. We address the question of defining cloud storage security and its different aspects, as well as enumerate the main vec- tors of attack on cloud storage. The reviewed papers present techniques for key management and controlled disclosure of encrypted data in cloud storage, while novel ideas regarding secure operations on encrypted data and methods for pro- tection of data in fully virtualized environments provide a glimpse of the toolbox available for securing cloud storage. Finally, new challenges such as emergent government regulation call for solutions to problems that did not receive enough attention in earlier stages of cloud computing, such as for example geographical location of data. The methods presented in the papers selected for this review represent only a small fraction of the wide research effort within cloud storage security. Nevertheless, they serve as an indication of the diversity of problems that are being addressed

Trusted Computing and Secure Virtualization in Cloud Computing

Large-scale deployment and use of cloud computing in industry is accompanied and in the same time hampered by concerns regarding protection of data handled by cloud computing providers. One of the consequences of moving data processing and storage off company premises is that organizations have less control over their infrastructure. As a result, cloud service (CS) clients must trust that the CS provider is able to protect their data and infrastructure from both external and internal attacks. Currently however, such trust can only rely on organizational processes declared by the CS provider and can not be remotely verified and validated by an external party. Enabling the CS client to verify the integrity of the host where the virtual machine instance will run, as well as to ensure that the virtual machine image has not been tampered with, are some steps towards building trust in the CS provider. Having the tools to perform such verifications prior to the launch of the VM instance allows the CS clients to decide in runtime whether certain data should be stored- or calculations should be made on the VM instance offered by the CS provider. This thesis combines three components -- trusted computing, virtualization technology and cloud computing platforms -- to address issues of trust and security in public cloud computing environments. Of the three components, virtualization technology has had the longest evolution and is a cornerstone for the realization of cloud computing. Trusted computing is a recent industry initiative that aims to implement the root of trust in a hardware component, the trusted platform module. The initiative has been formalized in a set of specifications and is currently at version 1.2. Cloud computing platforms pool virtualized computing, storage and network resources in order to serve a large number of customers customers that use a multi-tenant multiplexing model to offer on-demand self-service over broad network. Open source cloud computing platforms are, similar to trusted computing, a fairly recent technology in active development. The issue of trust in public cloud environments is addressed by examining the state of the art within cloud computing security and subsequently addressing the issues of establishing trust in the launch of a generic virtual machine in a public cloud environment. As a result, the thesis proposes a trusted launch protocol that allows CS clients to verify and ensure the integrity of the VM instance at launch time, as well as the integrity of the host where the VM instance is launched. The protocol relies on the use of Trusted Platform Module (TPM) for key generation and data protection. The TPM also plays an essential part in the integrity attestation of the VM instance host. Along with a theoretical, platform-agnostic protocol, the thesis also describes a detailed implementation design of the protocol using the OpenStack cloud computing platform. In order the verify the implementability of the proposed protocol, a prototype implementation has built using a distributed deployment of OpenStack. While the protocol covers only the trusted launch procedure using generic virtual machine images, it presents a step aimed to contribute towards the creation of a secure and trusted public cloud computing environment

Trusted integration of cloud-based NFC transaction players

Near Field Communication (NFC) is a short range wireless technology that provides contactless transmission of data between devices. With an NFC enabled device, users can exchange information from one device to another, make payments and use their NFC enabled device as their identity. As the main payment ecosystem players such as service providers and secure element issuers have crucial roles in a multi-application mobile environment similar to NFC, managing such an environment has become very challenging. One of the technologies that can be used to ensure secure NFC transaction is cloud computing which offers wide range of advantages compare to the use of a Secure Element (SE) as a single entity in an NFC enabled phone. This approach provides a comprehensive leadership of the cloud provider towards managing and controlling customer's information where it allows the SE which is stored within an NFC phone to deal with authentication mechanisms rather than storing and managing sensitive transaction information. This paper discusses the NFC cloud Wallet model which has been proposed by us previously [1] and introduces a different insight that defines a new integrated framework based on a trusted relationship between the vendor and the Mobile Network Operator (MNO). We then carry out an analysis of such a relationship to investigate different possibilities that arise from this approach