SCAR - Scatter, Conceal, and Recover
After several painful months of writing my masters thesis it is finally done. I feel really good about the work, I believe its original and could have some commercial application.
I have learned that I’m not good at writing (I kinda knew that already). As a result I’m going to focus my energy on learning how to be a better writer. I have several other research topics that am going to pursue and force myself to write about them. I figured the only way to get better at writing is to write.
Back to the topic at hand, my thesis is done! Below is the abstract and you can download the pdf.
Abstract:
This thesis describes a secure and reliable method for storing data in a distributed hash table (DHT) that leverages the inherent properties of the DHT to provide a secure storage substrate. The framework presented is referred to as “Scatter, Conceal, and Recover” (SCAR). The standard method of securing data in a DHT is to encrypt the data using symmetrical encryption before storing it in the network. SCAR provides this level of security, but also prevents any known cryptoanalysis from being performed. It does this by breaking the data into smaller blocks and scattering these blocks throughout the DHT. Hence, SCAR prevents any unauthorized user from obtaining the entire encrypted data block. SCAR uses hash chains to determine the storage locations for the data blocks within the DHT. To ensure storage availability, SCAR uses an erasure coding scheme to provide full data recovery given only partial block recovery.
This thesis presents the details of SCAR. First, the framework, related protocols, and mechanisms are described. Second, a prototype implementation is presented showing the feasibility of SCAR. Third, analytical models are discussed that characterize SCAR’s behavior, the models are then validated using experimental results. Lastly, the models are analyzed to further understand the tradeoff between data security and data availability. The exploration of this tradeoff leads to the conclusion that SCAR can effectively balance this tradeoff when the nodes of the network are “sufficiently” available.