(More) side channels in cloud storage: Linking data to users

Abstract

Public cloud storage services are gaining in popularity and several commercial actors are offering their services for users, however, not always with the security and privacy of their users as the primary design goal. This paper investigates side channels in public cloud storage services that allow the service provider, and in some cases users of the same service, to learn who has stored a given file and to profile users' usage of the service. These side channels are present in several public cloud storage services that are marketed as secure and privacy-friendly. Our conclusions are that cross-user deduplication should be disabled by default and that public cloud storage services need to be designed to provide unlinkability of users and data, even if the data is encrypted by users before storing it in the cloud. © 2012 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.