Verifying self-organized storage with bilinear pairings

This paper describes a cryptographic protocol for securing self-organized data storage through periodic verifications. Such verifications are beyond simple integrity checks since a storage node generates a proof that it still keeps the data that were uploaded to it. The proposed verification protocol is efficient, deterministic, and scalable and successfully prevents most of the security threats to self-organizing storage verification. In particular, a data owner can prevent data destruction at a specific holder by storing personalized replicas crafted thanks to the use of bilinear pairings. Furthermore, the protocol also makes it possible for the data owner to delegate the verification operation to other nodes without revealing any secret information.