Tag Archives: Cloud Computing

28/10/2016 – Talk by Matteo Maffei

Title: Security and Privacy for Cloud Storage
Time: 13:00
Location: Meeting room
Type: Research Result
Speaker: Matteo Maffei (Saarland University)
Abstract: Cloud storage has rapidly become a cornerstone of many IT infrastructures, constituting a seamless solution for the backup, synchronization, and sharing of large amounts of data. Putting user data in the direct control of cloud service providers, however, raises security and privacy concerns related to the integrity of outsourced data, the accidental or intentional leakage of sensitive information, the profiling of user activities and so on. Furthermore, even if the cloud provider is trusted, users having access to outsourced files might be malicious and misbehave. These concerns are particularly serious in sensitive applications like personal health records and credit score systems.
To tackle this problem, we present GORAM, a cryptographic system that protects the secrecy and integrity of outsourced data with respect to both an untrusted server and malicious clients, guarantees the anonymity and unlinkability of accesses to such data, and allows the data owner to share outsourced data with other clients, selectively granting them read and write permissions. GORAM is the first system to achieve such a wide range of security and privacy properties for outsourced storage. In the process of designing an efficient construction, we developed two new, generally applicable cryptographic schemes, namely, batched zero-knowledge proofs of shuffle and an accountability technique based on chameleon signatures, which we consider of independent interest. We implemented GORAM in Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and ran a performance evaluation demonstrating the scalability and efficiency of our construction.

18.12.2012 – Talk by Michele Mazzucco

Title: Revenue Maximization Problems in Commercial Data Centers

Date: 18/12/2012
Time: 1:00 pm
Location: Sala riunioni
Type: industrial application
Speaker: Michele Mazzucco (Demonware, Dublin)

Abstract:

As IT systems are becoming more and more important, one of the main concerns is that users may face major breakdowns and eventually incur major costs if computing systems do not meet the expected performance requirements: customers expect reliability and performance guarantees, while under-performing systems loose revenues. For example, it has been reported that Amazon tried delaying the page generation by 100 ms and found out that even very small delays would result in substantial and costly drops in revenue (1% sales drop for 100 ms delay). In this talk I will discuss some performance models aiming at optimizing the revenue earned by IT providers running ‘jobs’ subject to Quality of Service (QoS) constraints. The presentation is divided into two parts. In the first part I will analyze a business model where the QoS guarantees are formally defined through Service Level Agreements (SLAs), and thus the provider is liable to pay a penalty every time the promised performance level is not met. Experimental results show that revenues can be dramatically improved by imposing suitable conditions for accepting incoming traffic, and that the proposed policies perform well under different traffic conditions.

In the second part of the presentation I will discuss two queueing models for power and performance. The main difference compared to the first part of the talk is that now the QoS is implicit, and thus customers simply leave the system (or wait) if it under-performs, while the provider also takes into account the energy consumed by servers when deciding how many servers to allocate.

Michele Mazzucco graduated in Computer Science at the University of Bologna and obtained his PhD at the University of Newcastle under the supervision of prof. Mitrani. His main reserach interests include models for the performance evaluation and optimization of data centers. He has published in major conferences and journals on topics such as cloud computing and green computing. Since 2012, he works for Demonware.

DemonWare is an Irish software development company and a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard. DemonWare’s products enable games publishers to outsource their networking requirements, allowing them to concentrate on playability. The organisation has offices in Dublin, Ireland; and Vancouver, Canada.Primary products developed by DemonWare include the “DemonWare State Engine” and “Matchmaking+”. The State Engine is a high-performance state synchronization C++ programming framework that eliminates the need to reinvent netcode multiplayer games. Matchmaking+ provides services for multiplayer games such as matchmaking, user profiling, and gaming statistics. DemonWare’s main product has been used to support the development of several online games of success, among which Call of Duty.