ETH Zurich : Computer Science : Pervasive Computing : Distributed Systems : Education : Student Projects : Abstract

Developing a browser plugin to encrypt data shared in the cloud (B)

Status: Abgeschlossen

Users increasingly store personal and sensitive data in the cloud, in Webmail accounts, photo sharing and social networking websites. End users are not fully aware of the consequences of posting their data, and are unable to control how data is used and shared with other parties by the storage providers. To help protect users privacy, we implement an encryption system called Scramble, and integrated in the browser in the form of a browser plugin. Our system is based on the PGP encryption standard for email. However, we extend PGP to work with any data users post on websites such as Dropbox, Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, through their browser.

A center aspect of our system is the support for distributing PGP public keys with friends over the Internet. For this purpose, we will make use of existing social networks, such as Facebook. Encrypted data can be stored in any untrusted cloud storage platforms such as Dropbox. A mobile phone application can assist the user in verifying the authenticity of the exchanged keys. The exchange of encrypted data can be masked through techniques similar to steganography.

This Bachelor thesis will consist of the following components:

- Getting familiar with the PGP encryption standard and existing solutions that implement it

- Learning to develop a browser plugin

- Using the Facebook APIs to retrieve the list of friends of a user and publish his public key on his profile

- Using the Dropbox API to store encrypted data in an automatically created account

- Extending the Scramble firefox plugin to connect to Facebook and Dropbox and manage the list of contacts.

- Extending the Scramble plugin to encrypt files and mask encryption with steganography.