11.2Encrypted filesystems

CFS

• Homepage: ?
• Download: ?
• Author: Matt Blaze < mab@research.att.com >.
• License: ?
• Access: Read/Write, using DES/3DES.

CFS pushes encryption services into the Unix(tm) file system. It supports secure storage at the system level through a standard Unix file system interface to encrypted files. Users associate a cryptographic key with the directories they wish to protect. Files in these directories (as well as their pathname components) are transparently encrypted and decrypted with the specified key without further user intervention; cleartext is never stored on a disk or sent to a remote file server.

CFS employs a novel combination of DES stream and codebook cipher modes to provide high security with good performance on a modern workstation. CFS can use any available file system for its underlying storage without modification, including remote file servers such as NFS. System management functions, such as file backup, work in a normal manner and without knowledge of the key.

TCFS

• Homepage: http://tcfs.dia.unisa.it/
• Download: ftp://tcfs.dia.unisa.it/pub/tcfs/
• Authors: Luigi Catuogno < luicat@tcfs.dia.unisa.it >, Aniello Del Sorbo < anidel@tcfs.dia.unisa.it >, Luigi Della Monica < dellui@tcfs.dia.unisa.it >, G.Cattaneo < cattaneo@dia.unisa.it >, G.Persiano ( http://www.dia.unisa.it/~giuper/ ), Ermelindo (Erry) Mauriello < errmau@tcfs.dia.unisa.it >, Angelo Celentano < angcel@tcfs.dia.unisa.it >, Andrea Cozzolino < andcoz@tcfs.dia.unisa.it >.
• License: GPL
• Access: Read/Write transparently using CBC-DES/3DES/RC5/IDEA/Others..

The main difference between TCFS and CFS is the trasparency to user obtained by using TCFS.

As a matter of fact, CFS works in user space while TCFS works in the kernel space thus resulting in improved performances and security. The dynamic encryption module feature of TCFS allows a user to specify the encryption engine of his/her choiche to be used by TCFS. Currently available only for Linux, TCFS will be relased soon also for NetBSD, and will support in a near future also other FS then NFS.

SFS

( TODO: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/sfs/index.html )

VS3FS: Steganographic File System for Linux

• Homepage: http://www.linux-security.org/sfs/
• License: ?
• Access: ?

fspatch is a kernel patch which introduces module support for the steganographic file system (formerly known as vs3fs, an experimental type of filesytem that not only encrypts all information on the disk, but also tries to hide that information in such a way that it cannot be proven to even exist on the disk. This enables you to keep sensitive information on a disk, while not be prone to being forced to reveal that information. Even under extreme circumstances, fake documents could be stored on other parts of the disk, for which a pasword may be revealed. It should not be possible to find out whether any other information is stored on the disk.
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