POTSHARDS: Secure Long-Term Storage Without Encryption

Users are storing ever-increasing amounts of information digitally, driven by many factors including government regulations and the public’s desire to digitally record their personal histories. Unfortunately, many of the security mechanisms that modern systems rely upon, such as encryption, are poorly suited for storing data for indefinitely long periods of time—it is very difficult to manage keys and update cryptosystems to provide secrecy through encryption over periods of decades. Worse, an adversary who can compromise an archive need only wait for cryptanalysis techniques to catch up to the encryption algorithm used at the time of the compromise in order to obtain “secure” data. To address these concerns, we have developed POTSHARDS, an archival storage system that provides longterm security for data with very long lifetimes without using encryption. Secrecy is achieved by using provably secure secret splitting and spreading the resulting shares across separately-managed...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: USENIX
• Authors: Mark W. Storer, Kevin M. Greenan, Ethan L. Miller, Kaladhar Voruganti
• Keywords: Ever-increasing Amounts, Operating System, Secure Secret Splitting, USENIX 2007, User Data