Data integrity proof and secure computation in cloud computing

Abstract

Cloud computing is an emerging computing paradigm in which information technology resources and capacities are provided as services over the internet. The users can remotely store their data into the cloud so that the users can be relieved from the burden of local data storage and maintenance. The user does not have any control on the remotely located data. This unique feature possess many security challenges. One of the important concern is the integrity of data and computations. To ensure correctness of user's data in the cloud, an effective scheme assuring the integrity of the data stored in the cloud is proposed. We try to obtain and prove that the data stored in the cloud is not modified by the provider, thereby ensuring the integrity of data. To ensure secure computation our scheme uses the Merkle hash tree for checking the correctness of computations done by the cloud service provider. Algorithms are implemented using java core concepts and java Remote Method Invocation (RMI) concepts for client-server communication by setting up the private cloud environment with eucalyptus tool. This method is used to assure data integrity and secured computations with reduced computational and storage overhead of the client. © 2012 Science Publications.