proof-of-retrievability · research · also PoR

Proof of retrievability

A proof of retrievability is a storage-auditing protocol whose security model requires file extraction from a prover that succeeds sufficiently often in verification.

Shacham and Waters formalize an extractor and distinguish public verification from public extraction. Suitable erasure coding converts recovery of enough encoded blocks into recovery of the file. One accepted challenge is not itself a completed extraction. [1]

Hesela's operational synthesis: proof for a ciphertext object does not exercise decryption-key recovery, backup-version selection or application startup. Keep a separate restore test. [2]

Relations

related

provable-data-possession, proof-of-ownership, erasure-coding, restore-test, backup-verification

Citations

1. Shacham and Waters. Compact Proofs of Retrievability. Journal of Cryptology (2013), section 2, Appendix A. (accessed 2026-10-18)
2. Hesela: Encrypted deduplication, ownership proofs and remote storage audit boundaries (accessed 2026-10-18)

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