Data Privacy Threats in Cloud Storage: A Case Study of Dropbox

This research paper discusses the issues related to data privacy threats in cloud storage, specifically in the IaaS deployment model of Dropbox. The impact of data privacy threats and the man-in-the-middle attack are analyzed. The research questions focus on the various data privacy threats in cloud computing and their impact. The methodology used is secondary data analysis.

Running head: CLOUD STORAGE
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Name of the Student:
Name of University:
Author note:

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Research scope.................................................................................................................................2
Research Objective..........................................................................................................................2
Problem statement:..........................................................................................................................3
Background:.....................................................................................................................................3
Research questions:.........................................................................................................................4
Question Comparison:.....................................................................................................................4
Literature Review:...........................................................................................................................5
Impacts of data privacy threats:.......................................................................................................6
Application of new knowledge:.......................................................................................................7
Research Methodology:...................................................................................................................7
Conclusion:......................................................................................................................................8
Reference:........................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction:
Cloud computing is a vast field comprising of a huge amount of data. With the
technological advancement, cloud computing is in use widely. Cloud is capable of storing
enormous amount of data which can be accessed from anywhere and anytime. Cloud computing
has infused the idea of cost effectiveness in the Information Technology along with the
optimization of data for enhancing the performance of the system and so to the output. However,
there are certain constraints of using the cloud, and this research is about the issues that are faced
while cloud storage is considered (Rittinghouse & Ransome, 2017).
Research scope:
The research consists of the issues related to the data privacy in the cloud storage. The
type of the threat in the storage of the data in the IAAS deployment model of the cloud is
discussed over here. Dropbox, a cloud service American company is chosen over here for the
discussion platform (Arora, Parashar, & Transforming, 2013). The cloud storage, which has so
many benefits over the other storage facilities have some issues that is needed to be fixed.
Research Objective:
The objectives of the research are stated as follows:
 To look for the data privacy threat in the cloud computing
 To analyse the problems in storing data in the IaaS computing model in the Dropbox
services
 To find the impact of data privacy threats in the Dropbox services

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Problem statement:
Though cloud computing is favoured as the storage process for the organisation, there are
certain problems that arises when they are in use. There are many important and sensitive data
that are stored in the Cloud. With the advancement in the technology, there is an increase in the
cyber-crime exponentially. The attackers seeks for opportunities to invade the servers by any
means possible. Thus the data privacy is at a grave risk in the cloud computing (Almorsy,
Grundy & Müller, 2016). Hence, how the data breaches can occur in the system has been is a
matter of concern. There are certain attack that takes place in the cloud under the influence of the
hackers. The stolen data are misused for the unethical work, identity theft is one of the very
common among them. Man in the Middle is one such attack that has been discussed in detail in
the research (Singh, Jeong, & Park, 2016). The impact of the data privacy threat in the Cloud has
been discussed in the research as well.
Background:
Cloud computing is a model for delivering different services through internet.
Applications such as servers, data storage, networking, databases and software are the resources
used in cloud computing. There exists many cloud providers which deliver services based on
cloud computing (Rao, & Selvamani, 2015). Dropbox is one such service provider which is
operated by Dropbox Inc. Dropbox offers personal cloud, file synchronization, client software
and cloud storage. Files are brought together by Dropbox in one place by creating special folder
in the computer of the user. Dropbox offers applications for different operating systems and apps
for different mobile operating system. There are three types of services available in cloud
computing such as Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and
Platform-as-a-service (PaaS). IaaS are services provided online through high-level APIs that are

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used for dereferencing networking infrastructure’s several low-level details such as data
partitioning, security, scaling, backup and location (Gou, Yamaguchi & Gupta, 2017). Cloud
Orchestration Technology is used in IaaS. This creates virtual machine and takes the decision of
the type of hypervisor to start with, enabling the migration features of virtual machine between
hosts, allocating volumes for storage and attaching them in virtual machines.
Research questions:
1. What are the various data privacy threat in cloud computing and which of the data threat
affects the most?
2. What is the most significant data privacy threat in the IaaS cloud computing in the
Dropbox?
3. What is the impact of data privacy threat in the DropBox Cloud Services?
Question Comparison:
The first research question discusses about the various data privacy threat which exist in
the cloud computing and which of these threats affects the data. Outcome of this question is
focusing on the different data privacy threats that can occur in a cloud service. The second
research question discusses about the most significant data privacy threat which exists in IaaS
cloud services in Dropbox services. This question lay a detailed focus on a specific attack which
has a deep impact on the cloud services. The third research question discusses about the impact
which is created by data privacy threats in Dropbox cloud services. Among these questions, I
would like to lay focus on the second question as it discusses about one of the most significant
threats in IaaS cloud service in Dropbox Services, that is, Man-in-the-Middle attack. This attack

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cannot be detected until some alterations has already taken place within the system. Simple
encryptions or data security protocols cannot prevent this attack from occurring.
Literature Review:
The Cloud Services were considered to be safe until and unless the hackers found the
way to penetrate the security. The normal passwords and the security pattern usage are no longer
considered to be safe. The Cloud, which serves as the host to an enormous amount of data, are
exposed to the privacy threats. The data is no longer secured (Khan, & Al-Yasiri, 2016). There
are various attacks that is inherited by the hackers to hamper the privacy of the data. Man in the
Middle attack is one of the much known attack amongst them. This data privacy threat occurs
when a third person keeps an eye in the ongoing interaction of two or more connected server.
The hacker tracks every details and may act as an intruder in the conversation. The message sent
by the first sender reaches the second sender via the hacker’s server (Hussein & Khalid, 2016).
The hacker on the other hand acts as an intermediate in the conversation without the knowledge
of both the entities.
In the meantime, the essential data of from the individuals are collected by the
intermediate and modified information is passed over. The person remain unaware until and
unless there is some drastic change in the system or something undesirable happens to their
system. This is a very unpredictable attack (Rahim, 2017). In this attack, the attacker is capable
of doing many things. This include injection attacks, modifying data and many more. This attack
is successful as the end-user are pretty much convinced that their conversation is secured
unaware of the fact that they are not even talking to one another.

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Sniffing attack is the kind of man in the middle attack which is used for the
eavesdropping in a busy network traffic. When the ‘sniffers’ faces encrypted messages, they
moves on to the brute force attack (Conti, Dragoni & Lesyk, 2016). Virus and Worms can also
be inserted by the Man in the middle attackers in order to establish their tools in the system so
that the desired result can be achieved without the notice of the victim. These are the various data
privacy threats in the Cloud Computing IaaS deployment model.
Impacts of data privacy threats:
Cloud Storage is one of the very trustworthy storage now a days. As we discussed, there
are certain attacks that has significant impact on the data privacy and its security. There are often
sensitive data that are stored in the Cloud and due to these attacks generated by the hackers, the
data loss or manipulation of the data can occur. If a hacker has intention to remove all the data so
that no records can be accessed later, he will simply “drop” the database by hacking.
Organisational databases are store houses of data and these are very important for
keeping track of what is happening in the organisation. Loss of these data could result into acute
financial loss which is very dreadful scenario for the organisational employees as well as the
management. Most of the stolen data are generally used for the purpose of the illegal purposes.
There are certain attacks which denies the authorized users for accessing the system. If these are
the job of the Ransomeware, there is a possibility of a claim of the money in exchange of the
access to the system. Whenever there is a breach in the data privacy, the organisations privacy is
at threat.

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Application of new knowledge:
There are certain data privacy attacks that are discussed in the above report. The Man in
the Middle attack is one of the most unpredictable attacks among the data privacy attacks in an
organisation. Though there are certain security policies and methods are used for mitigating the
prevailing risk in the Cloud services, there are many more protocols which cannot be protected
from the attack, like the Open VPN and IPsec. These field can be worked on in the future. More
possibilities of the attacks can be deciphered when the higher protocols are accessed.
Advancement in the PKI may be reached by studying the DANE (DNS- Based Authentication of
Named Entities) in details.
Malwares can serve more than desired abilities to the attackers and this can also be a
topic of discussion in the future. The security challenges in the different platform can be disused
in the future too (Islam, Manivannan, & Zeadally, 2016).
Research Methodology:
Data Collection Method
Secondary data will be used for studying this research. Secondary data will have all kinds
of data available online.
Data Analysis Method
The collected data will be compared and comprehensive data will be collected. The data
gathered through online platform are directly related to this research.

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Conclusion:
Cloud is very advantageous in the Information Technology field as it has eased the
storage system of the organisation. It not only stores data systematically but also optimize the
data to give the best performance in the organisation. But there are certain challenges that have
to be faced while using the IaaS deployment model in cloud computing. Dropbox cloud service
providers also face similar problems. Among all the problems, data privacy threat is one of the
major issues faced by the organisations. There are several data which are sensitive in nature. The
leakage of such data causes a lot of problem both for the organisation and its’ clients. Hence,
several processes and strategy are in use which helps in protecting the data. In the research, the
man in the middle attack is discussed which is very common for the servers and are
unpredictable in nature. Though the cloud has many advantages over the legacy storage systems,
there are certain issues that has to be still considered while using the cloud infrastructure.

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Reference:
Almorsy, M., Grundy, J., & Müller, I. (2016). An analysis of the cloud computing security
problem. arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.01107.
Arora, R., Parashar, A., & Transforming, C. C. I. (2013). Secure user data in cloud computing
using encryption algorithms. International journal of engineering research and
applications, 3(4), 1922-1926.
Conti, M., Dragoni, N., & Lesyk, V. (2016). A survey of man in the middle attacks. IEEE
Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 18(3), 2027-2051.
Gou, Z., Yamaguchi, S., & Gupta, B. B. (2017). Analysis of various security issues and
challenges in cloud computing environment: a survey. In Identity Theft: Breakthroughs
in Research and Practice (pp. 221-247). IGI Global.
Hussain, S. A., Fatima, M., Saeed, A., Raza, I., & Shahzad, R. K. (2017). Multilevel
classification of security concerns in cloud computing. Applied Computing and
Informatics, 13(1), 57-65.
Hussein, N. H., & Khalid, A. (2016). A survey of cloud computing security challenges and
solutions. International Journal of Computer Science and Information Security, 14(1),
52.
Islam, T., Manivannan, D., & Zeadally, S. (2016). A classification and characterization of
security threats in cloud computing. Int. J. Next-Gener. Comput, 7(1).
Khan, N., & Al-Yasiri, A. (2016). Identifying cloud security threats to strengthen cloud
computing adoption framework. Procedia Computer Science, 94, 485-490.

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Madni, S. H. H., Latiff, M. S. A., & Coulibaly, Y. (2016). Resource scheduling for
infrastructure as a service (IaaS) in cloud computing: Challenges and
opportunities. Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 68, 173-200.
Rahim, R. (2017). Man-in-the-middle-attack prevention using interlock protocol method. ARPN
J. Eng. Appl. Sci, 12(22), 6483-6487.
Rao, R. V., & Selvamani, K. (2015). Data security challenges and its solutions in cloud
computing. Procedia Computer Science, 48, 204-209.
Rittinghouse, J. W., & Ransome, J. F. (2017). Cloud computing: implementation, management,
and security. CRC press.
Singh, S., Jeong, Y. S., & Park, J. H. (2016). A survey on cloud computing security: Issues,
threats, and solutions. Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 75, 200-222.