2017 IEEE. We consider the problem of designing codes for distributed storage that protect user data against eavesdroppers that can gain access to network links as well as individual nodes. Our goal is to achieve weak (block) security that requires that the eavesdroppers would not be able to decode individual files or combinations of a small number of files. The standard approach for achieving block security is to use a joint design scheme that consists of (inner) storage code and the (outer) coset code. However, jointly designing the codes requires that the user, who pre-process and stores the files, should know the underlying storage code in order to design the (outer) linear transformation for achieving weak security. In many practical scenarios, such as storing the files on the third party cloud storage system, it may not be possible for the user to know the underlying storage code. In this work, we present a universal scheme that separates the outer code design from the storage code design for minimum storage regenerating codes (MSR). Our scheme allows the independent design of the storage code and the outer code. Our scheme uses small field size and can be used in a broad range of practical settings.
