Efficient remote data possession checking in critical information infrastructures

Checking data possession in networked information systems such as those related to critical infrastructures (power facilities, airports, data vaults, defense systems, and so forth) is a matter of crucial importance. Remote data possession checking protocols permit checking that a remote server can access an uncorrupted file in such a way that the verifier does not need to know beforehand the entire file that is being verified. Unfortunately, current protocols only allow a limited number of successive verifications or are impractical from the computational point of view. In this paper, we present a new remote data possession checking protocol such that 1) it allows an unlimited number of file integrity verifications and 2) its maximum running time can be chosen at set-up time and traded off against storage at the verifier.