EStore: A User-Friendly Encrypted Storage Scheme for Distributed File Systems

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a user-friendly encrypted storage scheme named EStore, which is based on the Hadoop distributed file system. Users can make use of cloud-based distributed file systems to collaborate with each other. However, most data are processed and stored in plaintext, which is out of the owner’s control after it has been uploaded and shared. Meanwhile, simple encryption guarantees the confidentiality of uploaded data but reduces availability. Furthermore, it is difficult to deal with complex key management as there is the problem whereby a single key encrypts different files, thus increasing the risk of leakage. In order to solve the issues above, we put forward an encrypted storage model and a threat model, designed with corresponding system architecture to cope with these requirements. Further, we designed and implemented six sets of protocols to meet users’ requirements for security and use. EStore manages users and their keys through registration and authentication, and we developed a searchable encryption module and encryption/decryption module to support ciphertext retrieval and secure data outsourcing, which will only minimally increase the calculation overhead of the client and storage redundancy. Users are invulnerable compared to the original file system. Finally, we conducted a security analysis of the protocols to demonstrate that EStore is feasible and secure.

Keywords

• distributed file system
• ciphertext retrieval
• key management
• encrypted storage
• fine-grained encryption
• secure data sharing