SHoPS: Set Homomorphic Proof of Data Possession Scheme in Cloud Storage Applications

The prospect of outsourcing an increasing amount of data to a third party and the abstract nature of the cloud promote the proliferation of security and privacy challenges, namely, the remote data possession checking. This paper addresses this security concern, while supporting the verification of several data blocks outsourced across multiple storing nodes. We propose a new set homomorphic proof of data possession, called SHoPS, supporting the verification of aggregated proofs. It proposes a deterministic Proof of Data Possession (PDP) scheme based on interactive proof protocols. Our approach has several advantages. First, it supports public verifiability where the data owner delegates the verification process to another entity, thus releasing him from the burden of periodical verifications. Second, it allows the aggregation of several proofs and the verification of a subset of data files´ proofs while providing an attractive communication overhead.