Safecloud: A Distributed, Encrypted Storage Cloud for Streaming

Computer Science > Cryptography and Security [Submitted on 2 Jun 2026] Safecloud: A Distributed, Encrypted Storage Cloud for Streaming Gregory Magarshak We present Safecloud, a distributed, encrypted, self-pricing storage and streaming network whose storage and routing nodes never see plaintext and never hold keys. Each file is split into chunks, encrypted on the owner's device, and distributed across Drops (browser tabs storing ciphertext in IndexedDB) and Jets (federated routing servers). Only the owner, or an authorised grantee, can decrypt. We make five contributions: (1) A one-root key hierarchy: every key derives deterministically from a single root via HKDF, and owner and range-scoped grantee derive identical chunk keys (derivation agreement); a subtree key derives its range and nothing else (delegation containment). (2) Convergent content addressing: identical content yields identical ciphertext and identifiers, enabling deduplication without plaintext exposure, with identifiers binding authenticated ciphertext so a keyless Drop verifies integrity (blind verifiability). (3) Three parallel trees over one navigation path (Merkle for integrity, key-derivation for confidentiality, access for authorisation), with sound Merkle-verified retrieval. (4) The key tree doubles as a streaming index: a player derives each segment key in O(1), seeking by derivation, while parallel tracks (video, audio, captions) are independent subtrees unlockable per-track and per-segment, a combination we believe no prior encrypted-storage network offers. (5) Jets and Drops earn Safebux verifiably, kept honest by a one-signature proof-of-storage challenge under chilling-effect Proof-of-Corruption, a zero-sum economy that is significantly cheaper than Filecoin's proof-of-replication sealing (which is slow and provides no confidentiality). We give the architecture, cryptographic construction, a threat model, and an open-source reference implementation, stating precisely what is implemented versus designed. Comments: 7 pages, 2 tables. Reference implementation open-source. Companion to Intercloud (arXiv:2605.22830) and a forthcoming Safecloud 2.0 compute paper Subjects: Cryptography and Security (cs.CR); Databases (cs.DB); Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing (cs.DC); Multimedia (cs.MM); Networking and Internet Architecture (cs.NI); Image and Video Processing (eess.IV) ACM classes: E.3; C.2.4; H.3.2; D.4.6 Cite as: arXiv:2606.09870 [cs.CR]   (or arXiv:2606.09870v1 [cs.CR] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2606.09870 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Gregory Magarshak [view email] [v1] Tue, 2 Jun 2026 02:12:42 UTC (15 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: cs.CR < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-06 Change to browse by: cs cs.DB cs.DC cs.MM cs.NI eess eess.IV References & Citations NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)