Partitioned Private User Storages in End-to-End Encrypted Online Social Networks

TL;DR

This paper proposes a scheme to split encrypted user storages into multiple parts in end-to-end encrypted social networks, enhancing the chances of recovery even with inactive or malicious shareholders.

Contribution

It introduces a novel partitioned storage scheme that improves key recovery rates in secure OSNs by distributing shares among participants.

Findings

High success rates in reconstructing private storages.

Effective even with many inactive or malicious shareholders.

Enhanced security and reliability of cryptographic key management.

Abstract

In secure Online Social Networks (OSN), often end-to-end encryption approaches are used. This ensures the privacy of communication between the participants. To manage, store, or transfer the cryptographic keys from one device to another one, encrypted private storages can be used. To gain access to such storages, login credentials, only known to the user, are needed. Losing these credentials results in a permanent loss of cryptographic keys and messages because the storage is encrypted. We present a scheme to split encrypted user storages into multiple storages. Each one can be reconstructed with the help of other participants of the OSN. The more of the storages can be reconstructed, the higher the chance of successfully reconstructing the complete private storage is. Therefore, regaining possession of the cryptographic keys used for communication is increased. We achieve high rates of successful reconstructions, even if a large fraction of the distributed shares are not accessible anymore because the shareholders are inactive or malicious.