Security in Cloud Computing- Hash Function

Abstract

There is a critical need to securely store, manage, share and analyze massive amounts of complex (e.g., semi-structure and unstructured) data to determine patterns and trends in order to improve the quality of healthcare, better safeguard the nation and explore alternative energy. Because of the critical nature of the applications, it is important that clouds be secure. The major security challenge with clouds is that the owner of the data may not have control of where the data is placed. This is because if one wants to exploit the benefits of using cloud computing, one must also utilize the resource allocation and scheduling provided by clouds. Therefore we need to safeguard the data in the midst of entrusted processes. In this method some important security services including authentication, encryption and decryption are provided in Cloud Computing system.

Security challenges of integration of hash functions into cloud systems

“…In the following sections we put special focus on hash functions and security issues imposed by their integration over cloud. There are many ways in which a hash code can be used to provide message authentication in cloud systems [9]: (i) Encrypt message plus hash code; (ii) Encrypt hash code-shared secret key; (iii) Encrypt hash code-sender's private key; (iv) Compute hash code of message plus secret value; (v) Confidentiality with encrypting the entire message plus the hash code. Thus, any flaw or weakness in standard or popular hash algorithms affects the safety of data stored in cloud.…”