Self-Emerging Data Infrastructures

Balaji Palanisamy, Chao Li

Abstract: Timed release of data is an important security primitive for various applications. Such timed data release can be supported using a self-emerging data infrastructure that protects the data until a prescribed data release time and automatically releases to the recipient at the release time. While straight-forward centralized approaches such as cloud storage services may provide a straight-forward solution to implement self-emerging data release, unfortunately, they are limited to a single point of trust and involves a single point of control. In this vision paper, we discuss and review new decentralized designs of self-emerging data release systems using large-scale peer-to-peer (P2P) networks as the underlying infrastructure. We analyze the design of decentralized self-emerging data release systems using two P2P network infrastructures, namely Distributed Hash Tables (DHTs) and blockchains. We demonstrate how self-emerging data release can be used to support gradual release of private data in a decentralized infrastructure. Finally, we present some promising directions of future research on security primitives and protocols for timed release of private data in decentralized environments.