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Providing Tamper-Resistant Audit Trails for Cloud Forensics with Distributed Ledger based Solutions

Authors:
Mats Neovius
Magnus Westerlund
Jonny Karlsson
Göran Pulkkis

Keywords: cloud computing; distributed ledger; blockchain; security; privacy

Abstract:
and information security are often more challenging in cloud computing than in onsite computing. Cloud computing resources are publicly accessible and thereby through this availability increase the risk of intrusion. The increase in the processing of sensitive data on cloud resources makes security challenges more noteworthy, particularly in light of legal issues around cross-border transfers and data protection. Technologies preventing intrusion are effective, yet not perfect. Once a system is compromised, the intruder frequently starts to delete and to modify audit trails and system log files for covering-up the intrusion. Complete and untampered audit trails and log files are essential for the legitimate owner of the cloud instance or service to estimate the losses, to reconstruct the data, to detect the origin of the intrusion attack, and eventually in a court of law be able to prosecute the attacker. Due to this, improved methods for performing forensics in the cloud domain are desperately needed. The baseline for any forensic investigation is assured data availability and integrity. In this position paper, we outline how the availability and integrity of this forensic data can be assured by applying distributed ledger based solutions for securely storing audit trails and log files in immutable databases. Given this approach, an attacker can neither delete, nor modify past trails or logs but merely stop generating new data into log files. The position presented here is novel, yet light enough for practical use

Pages: 19 to 24

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2018

Publication date: February 18, 2018

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4294

ISBN: 978-1-61208-607-1

Location: Barcelona, Spain

Dates: from February 18, 2018 to February 22, 2018