ETH Zurich, Department of Computer Science, Systems Group
Doi
Abstract
Everybody loves Google Apps. Google provides highly available web applications that help you communicate, organize and collaborate from anywhere using different interfaces in the most user friendly and efficient way, without being worried about any IT issues. However, some people still hesitate using Google services because of privacy and trust issues. In this paper, we identify privacy issues in GoogleWeb Applications as a particularly vital problem and propose a solution. In our solution a transparent encryption layer is put between the user and the cloud service provider on a site trusted by the user. This layer accesses the request and response messages passed between the two parties in a fine-grained manner. It applies modern cryptography techniques to encrypt the data without sacrificing functionality and portability of the cloud service. This way the trust of the end user can be reobtained and he or she will be encouraged to further enjoy using web applications such as Google Apps without having to worry about privacy issues
