CryoCloud

Cloud storage has come to rely almost exclusively on large storage providers acting as trusted third parties to transfer and store data. This system suffers from the inherent weaknesses of a trust-based model. Because client-side encryption is nonstandard, the traditional cloud is vulnerable to a variety of security threats, including man-in-the-middle attacks, malware, and application laws that expose private consumer and corporate data. Moreover, because many storage devices rely on the same infrastructure, failures is correlated across files and systems.

A decentralized cloud storage network offers many advantages compared to datacenter-based cloud storage. Data security can be maintained using clientside encryption, while data integrity will be maintained via a proof of retrievability. The impact of infrastructure failures and security breaches will be greatly reduced. An open market for data storage may drive down costs for various storage services by enabling more parties to compete using existing devices. Data on the network will be resistant to censorship, tampering, unauthorized access, and data failures. This paper describes a concrete implementation of such a network, and a set of tools for interacting with that network.