BLA2C2: Design of a Novel Blockchain-based Light-Weight Authentication & Access Control Layer for Cloud Deployments

Cloud deployments are consistently under attack, from both internal and external adversaries. These attacks include, but are not limited to brute force, masquerading, improper access, session hijacking, cross site scripting (XSS), etc. To mitigate these attacks, a wide variety of authentication & access control models are proposed by researchers, and each of them vary in terms of their internal implementation characteristics. It was observed that these models are either highly complex, or lack in terms of security under multiple attacks, which limits their applicability for real-time deployments. Moreover, some of these models are not flexible and cannot be deployed under dynamic cloud scenarios (like constant reconfigurations of Virtual Machines, dynamic authentication use-cases, etc.). To overcome these issues, this text proposes design of a novel blockchain-based Light-weight authentication & access control layer that can be used for dynamic cloud deployments. The proposed model initially applies a header-level light-weight sanitization layer that removes Cross Site Scripting, SQL Injection, and other data-level attacks. This is followed by a light-weight authentication layer, that assists in improving login-level security for external attacks. The authentication layer uses IP matching with reverse geolocation mapping in order to estimate outlier login attempts. This layer is cascaded with an efficient blockchain-based access control model, which assists in mitigating session hijacking, masquerading, sybil and other control-level attacks. The blockchain model is developed via integration of Grey Wolf Optimization (GWO) to reduce unnecessary complexities, and provides faster response when compared with existing blockchain-based security deployments. Efficiency of the model was estimated in terms of accuracy of detection for different attack types, delay needed for detection of these attacks, and computational complexity during attack mitigation operations. This performance was compared with existing models, and it was observed that the proposed model showcases 8.3% higher accuracy, with 10.5% lower delay, and 5.9% lower complexity w.r.t. standard blockchain-based & other security models. Due to these enhancements, the proposed model was capable of deployment for a wide variety of large-scale scenarios

Active data-centric framework for data protection in cloud environment

Cloud computing is an emerging evolutionary computing model that provides highly scalable services over highspeed Internet on a pay-as-usage model. However, cloud-based solutions still have not been widely deployed in some sensitive areas, such as banking and healthcare. The lack of widespread development is related to users&rsquo; concern that their confidential data or privacy would leak out in the cloud&rsquo;s outsourced environment. To address this problem, we propose a novel active data-centric framework to ultimately improve the transparency and accountability of actual usage of the users&rsquo; data in cloud. Our data-centric framework emphasizes &ldquo;active&rdquo; feature which packages the raw data with active properties that enforce data usage with active defending and protection capability. To achieve the active scheme, we devise the Triggerable Data File Structure (TDFS). Moreover, we employ the zero-knowledge proof scheme to verify the request&rsquo;s identification without revealing any vital information. Our experimental outcomes demonstrate the efficiency, dependability, and scalability of our framework.<br /

Data Access in Multiauthority Cloud Storage: Expressive and Revocable Data Control System

ABSTRACT Cloud computing is rising enormously due to its advantages and the adaptable storage services being provided by it. Because of this, the number of users has reached the top level. The users will share the sensitive data through the cloud. Furthermore, the user can\u27t trust the untrusted cloud server. Subsequently, the data access control has turned out to be extremely challenging in cloud storage framework. In existing work, revocable data access control scheme proposed for multi-authority cloud storage frameworks which supports the access control in light of the authority control. The authorized users who have desirable attributes given by various authorities can access the data. However, it couldn\u27t control the attacks which can happen to the authorized user who is not having desirable attributes. In this work, they propose a new algorithm named Improved Security Data Access Control which beats the issue exists in the existing work. And furthermore, incorporates the efficient attribute revocation strategy for multi-authority cloud storage. Keywords: Access control, multi-authority, attribute revocation, cloud storage

Encrypted Data Sharing in Cloud data storage using Cloud Computing

To ensure confidentiality, data owners outsource encrypted data instead of plaintexts. To share the encrypted files with other users, Ciphertext-Policy Attribute-based Encryption (CP-ABE) can be utilized to conduct fine-grained and owner-centric access control. But this does not sufficiently become secure against other attacks. Many previous schemes did not grant the cloud provider the capability to verify whether a downloader can decrypt. Therefore, these files should be available to everyone accessible to the cloud storage. which will largely consume the cloud resource. The payer of the cloud service bears the expense. Besides, the cloud provider serves both as the accountant and the payee of resource consumption fee, lacking the transparency to data owners. These concerns should be resolved in real-world public cloud storage. In this paper, we propose a solution to secure encrypted cloud storages and provide resource consumption accountability. It uses CP-ABE schemes in a black-box manner and complies with arbitrary access policy of CP-ABE. We present two protocols for different settings, followed by performance and security analysis

Multi-way Cloud-Side Access Control for Encrypted Cloud Storage

Individuals support the incredible intensity of cloud computing, however can't completely believe the cloud providers to have protection delicate data, because of the nonattendance of client to-cloud controllability. To guarantee confidentiality, data administrators redistribute scrambled data rather than plaintexts. To impart the scrambled files to different clients, ciphertext-strategy attribute-based encryption can be used to direct fine-grained and administrator driven access control. Yet, this doesn't adequately get secure against different assaults. Numerous past schemes didn't concede the cloud supplier the capacity to check whether a downloader can decode. Along these lines, these files ought to be accessible to everybody open to the cloud storage. A noxious aggressor can download a great many files to dispatch monetary refusal of supportability assaults, which will to a great extent expend the cloud asset. The payer of the cloud service bears the cost. These worries ought to be settled in true open cloud storage. In this paper, we propose an answer for secure encoded cloud storages from EDoS assaults and give asset utilization responsibility. We present two conventions for various settings, trailed by execution and security examination. Furthermore, attribute-based control in the framework additionally empowers the cloud server to confine the entrance to those clients with a similar arrangement of attributes while protecting client security, i.e., the cloud server just realizes that the client satisfies the necessary predicate, however has no clue on the specific identity of the client

Auto-ID enabled tracking and tracing data sharing over dynamic B2B and B2G relationships

RFID 2011 collocated with the 2011 IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Workshop Series on Millimeter Wave Integration Technologies (IMWS 2011)Growing complexity and uncertainty are still the key challenges enterprises are facing in managing and re-engineering their existing supply chains. To tackle these challenges, they are continuing innovating management practices and piloting emerging technologies for achieving supply chain visibility, agility, adaptability and security. Nowadays, subcontracting has already become a common practice in modern logistics industry through partnership establishment between the involved stakeholders for delivering consignments from a consignor to a consignee. Companies involved in international supply chain are piloting various supply chain security and integrity initiatives promoted by customs to establish trusted business-to-customs partnership for facilitating global trade and cutting out avoidable supply chain costs and delays due to governmental regulations compliance and unnecessary customs inspection. While existing Auto-ID enabled tracking and tracing solutions are promising for implementing these practices, they provide few efficient privacy protection mechanisms for stakeholders involved in the international supply chain to communicate logistics data over dynamic business-to-business and business-government relationships. A unified privacy protection mechanism is proposed in this work to fill in this gap. © 2011 IEEE.published_or_final_versio

Data security in cloud storage services

Cloud Computing is considered to be the next-generation architecture for ICT where it moves the application software and databases to the centralized large data centers. It aims to offer elastic IT services where clients can benefit from significant cost savings of the pay-per-use model and can easily scale up or down, and do not have to make large investments in new hardware. However, the management of the data and services in this cloud model is under the control of the provider. Consequently, the cloud clients have less control over their outsourced data and they have to trust cloud service provider to protect their data and infrastructure from both external and internal attacks. This is especially true with cloud storage services. Nowadays, users rely on cloud storage as it offers cheap and unlimited data storage that is available for use by multiple devices (e.g. smart phones, tablets, notebooks, etc.). Besides famous cloud storage providers, such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, more and more third-party cloud storage service providers are emerging. These services are dedicated to offering more accessible and user friendly storage services to cloud customers. Examples of these services include Dropbox, Box.net, Sparkleshare, UbuntuOne or JungleDisk. These cloud storage services deliver a very simple interface on top of the cloud storage provided by storage service providers. File and folder synchronization between different machines, sharing files and folders with other users, file versioning as well as automated backups are the key functionalities of these emerging cloud storage services. Cloud storage services have changed the way users manage and interact with data outsourced to public providers. With these services, multiple subscribers can collaboratively work and share data without concerns about their data consistency, availability and reliability. Although these cloud storage services offer attractive features, many customers have not adopted these services. Since data stored in these services is under the control of service providers resulting in confidentiality and security concerns and risks. Therefore, using cloud storage services for storing valuable data depends mainly on whether the service provider can offer sufficient security and assurance to meet client requirements. From the way most cloud storage services are constructed, we can notice that these storage services do not provide users with sufficient levels of security leading to an inherent risk on users\u27 data from external and internal attacks. These attacks take the form of: data exposure (lack of data confidentiality); data tampering (lack of data integrity); and denial of data (lack of data availability) by third parties on the cloud or by the cloud provider himself. Therefore, the cloud storage services should ensure the data confidentiality in the following state: data in motion (while transmitting over networks), data at rest (when stored at provider\u27s disks). To address the above concerns, confidentiality and access controllability of outsourced data with strong cryptographic guarantee should be maintained. To ensure data confidentiality in public cloud storage services, data should be encrypted data before it is outsourced to these services. Although, users can rely on client side cloud storage services or software encryption tools for encrypting user\u27s data; however, many of these services fail to achieve data confidentiality. Box, for example, does not encrypt user files via SSL and within Box servers. Client side cloud storage services can intentionally/unintentionally disclose user decryption keys to its provider. In addition, some cloud storage services support convergent encryption for encrypting users\u27 data exposing it to “confirmation of a file attack. On the other hand, software encryption tools use full-disk encryption (FDE) which is not feasible for cloud-based file sharing services, because it encrypts the data as virtual hard disks. Although encryption can ensure data confidentiality; however, it fails to achieve fine-grained access control over outsourced data. Since, public cloud storage services are managed by un-trusted cloud service provider, secure and efficient fine-grained access control cannot be realized through these services as these policies are managed by storage services that have full control over the sharing process. Therefore, there is not any guarantee that they will provide good means for efficient and secure sharing and they can also deduce confidential information about the outsourced data and users\u27 personal information. In this work, we would like to improve the currently employed security measures for securing data in cloud store services. To achieve better data confidentiality for data stored in the cloud without relying on cloud service providers (CSPs) or putting any burden on users, in this thesis, we designed a secure cloud storage system framework that simultaneously achieves data confidentiality, fine-grained access control on encrypted data and scalable user revocation. This framework is built on a third part trusted (TTP) service that can be employed either locally on users\u27 machine or premises, or remotely on top of cloud storage services. This service shall encrypts users data before uploading it to the cloud and decrypts it after downloading from the cloud; therefore, it remove the burden of storing, managing and maintaining encryption/decryption keys from data owner\u27s. In addition, this service only retains user\u27s secret key(s) not data. Moreover, to ensure high security for these keys, it stores them on hardware device. Furthermore, this service combines multi-authority ciphertext policy attribute-based encryption (CP-ABE) and attribute-based Signature (ABS) for achieving many-read-many-write fine-grained data access control on storage services. Moreover, it efficiently revokes users\u27 privileges without relying on the data owner for re-encrypting massive amounts of data and re-distributing the new keys to the authorized users. It removes the heavy computation of re-encryption from users and delegates this task to the cloud service provider (CSP) proxy servers. These proxy servers achieve flexible and efficient re-encryption without revealing underlying data to the cloud. In our designed architecture, we addressed the problem of ensuring data confidentiality against cloud and against accesses beyond authorized rights. To resolve these issues, we designed a trusted third party (TTP) service that is in charge of storing data in an encrypted format in the cloud. To improve the efficiency of the designed architecture, the service allows the users to choose the level of severity of the data and according to this level different encryption algorithms are employed. To achieve many-read-many-write fine grained access control, we merge two algorithms (multi-authority ciphertext policy attribute-based encryption (MA- CP-ABE) and attribute-based Signature (ABS)). Moreover, we support two levels of revocation: user and attribute revocation so that we can comply with the collaborative environment. Last but not least, we validate the effectiveness of our design by carrying out a detailed security analysis. This analysis shall prove the correctness of our design in terms of data confidentiality each stage of user interaction with the cloud