Enabling Transparent Deduplication and Auditing for Encrypted Data in Cloud

In cloud storage systems, secure deduplication plays a critical role in saving storage costs for the cloud server and ensuring data confidentiality for cloud users. Traditional secure deduplication schemes require users to encrypt their outsourced files using specific encryption algorithms that cannot provide semantic security. However, users are unable to directly benefit from the storage savings, as the relation between the actual storage cost and the offered prices remains not transparent. As a result, users may be unwilling to cooperate with the cloud by encrypting their data using semantically secure algorithms. Moreover, data integrity is a significant concern for cloud storage users. To address these issues, this paper proposes a novel transparent and secure deduplication scheme that supports integrity auditing. Compared to previous works, our design can verify the number of file owners and the integrity through one-time proof verification. It also protects the private contents of files and the privacy of file ownership from malicious users. Moreover, our scheme includes a batch auditing method to simultaneously verify the numbers of file owners and the integrity of multiple files. Theoretical analysis confirms the correctness and security of our scheme. Comparison results demonstrate its competing performance over previous solutions. © 2023 IEEE.