securefs
securefs
is a filesystem in userspace (FUSE) with transparent encryption (when writing) and decryption (when reading).
securefs
mounts a regular directory onto a mount point. The mount point appears as a regular filesystem, where one can read/write/create files, directories and symbolic links. The underlying directory will be automatically updated to contain the encrypted and authenticated contents.
Motivation
From sensitive financial records to personal diaries and collection of guilty pleasures, we all have something to keep private from prying eyes. Especially when we store our files in the cloud, the company and the NSA may well get their hands upon it. The best protection we can afford ourselves is cryptography, the discipline developed by mathematicians and military originally to keep the national secrets.
Security, however, is often at odds with convenience, and people easily grow tired of the hassle and revert to no protection at all. Consider the case of protecting our files either locally or in the cloud: we have to encrypt the files before committing to the cloud and decrypt it every time we need to read and write. Worse still, such actions leave unencrypted traces on our hard drive. If we store data in the cloud, another issue arise: manual encryption and decryption prevent files from being synced efficiently.
securefs
is intended to make the experience as smooth as possible so that the security and convenience do not conflict. After mounting the virtual filesystem, everything just works™.
Comparison
There are already many encrypting filesystem in widespread use. Some notable ones are TrueCrypt, FileVault, BitLocker, eCryptFS, encfs and gocryptfs. securefs
differs from them in that it is the only one with all of the following features:
- Authenticated encryption (hence secure against chosen ciphertext attacks)
- Probabilistic encryption (hence provides semantical security)
- Supported on all major platforms (Mac, Linux, BSDs and Windows)
- Efficient cloud synchronization (not a single preallocated file as container)
- (Optional) File size obfuscation by random padding.
Install
Dependencies
On Windows, we need to separately install WinFsp and VC++ redistributable.
On Linux, we need to install fuse-dev
package.
On FreeBSD, we need to run pkg install fusefs-libs
.
On macOS, we need to install MacFUSE.
Binary packages
Download from the Release page.
Build from source
First you need to install vcpkg. Then run python3 build.py --enable_test
.
Package managers
macOS
Use homebrew.
brew install netheril96/fuse/securefs-mac
Basic usage
It is recommended to disable or encrypt the swap and hibernation file. Otherwise plaintext and keys stored in the main memory may be written to disk by the OS at any time.
Examples:
securefs --help
securefs create ~/Secret
securefs chpass ~/Secret
securefs mount ~/Secret ~/Mount # press Ctrl-C to unmount
securefs m -h # m is an alias for mount, -h tell you all the flags
Lite and full mode
There are two categories of filesystem format.
The lite format simply encrypts filenames and file contents separately, similar to how encfs
operates, although with more security.
The full format maps files, directory and symlinks in the virtual filesystem all to regular files in the underlying filesystem. The directory structure is flattened and recorded as B-trees in files.
The lite format has become the default on Unix-like operating systems as it is much faster and features easier conflict resolution, especially when used with DropBox, Google Drive, etc. The full format, however, leaks fewer information about the filesystem hierarchy, runs relatively independent of the features of the underlying filesystem, and is in general more secure.
To request full format, which is no longer the default, run securefs create --format 2
.
Design and algorithms
See here.
Caveat
If you store securefs
encrypted files on iCloud Drive, it might cause Spotlight Search on iOS to stop working. It is a bug in iOS, not in securefs
.
To work around that bug, you can disable the indexing of Files app in Settings -> Siri & Suggestions.