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libgocryptfs/README.md

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GoCryptFS

An encrypted overlay filesystem focused on security and correctness.

gocryptfs is built on top the excellent go-fuse FUSE library and its LoopbackFileSystem API.

This project was inspired by EncFS and strives to fix its security issues (see EncFS tickets 9, 13, 14, 16).

Current Status

  • First public release
  • Feature-Complete
  • Passes the xfstests "generic" tests

Install

go get github.com/rfjakob/gocryptfs

Security

"Security" can be split into "Confidentiality" and "Integrity". The security level gocryptfs provides for each is discussed in the next sections.

Confidentiality

Confidentiality means that information cannot be extracted from the encrypted data unless you know the key.

File Contents

  • All file contents (even the last bytes) are encrypted using AES-256-GCM
  • This is unbreakable in the foreseeable future. Attacks will focus on cracking the password instead (see section "Master Key Storage").
  • Files are segmented into 4096 byte blocks
  • Each block gets a fresh random 96 bit IV (none) each time it is written.
  • This means that identical blocks can not be identified

File Names

  • File names are encrypted using AES-256-CBC because it is robust even without using an IV
  • The file names are padded to multiples of 16 bytes
  • This means that the exact length of the name is hidden, only length ranges (1-16 bytes, 17-32 bytes etc.) can be determined from the encrypted files
  • For technical reasons, no IV is used
  • This means that files with the same name within one gocryptfs filesystem always get the same encrypted name

Metadata

  • The size of the file is not hidden. The exact file size can be calculated from the size of the encrypted file.
  • File owner, file permissions and timestamps are not hidden either

Integrity

Integrity means that the data cannot be modified in a meaningful way unless you have the key. The opposite of integrity is malleability.

File Contents

  • The used encryption, AES-256-GCM, is a variant of authenticated encryption. Each block gets a 128 bit authentication tag (GMAC) appended.
  • This means that any modification inside block will be detected when reading the block and decryption will be aborted. The failure is logged and an I/O error is returned to the user.
  • Each block uses its block number as GCM authentication data
  • This means the position of the blocks is protected as well. The blocks can not be reordered without causing an decryption error.
  • However, proper affiliation of a block to the file is not checked.
  • This means that blocks can be copied between different files provided that they stay at the same position.
  • For technical reasons (sparse files), the special "all-zero" block is seen as a valid block that decrypts to an all-zero block.

File Names

  • File names are only weakly protected against modifications.
  • Changing a single byte causes a decode error in at least 255 of 256 cases. The failure is logged and the file is no longer visible in the directory.
  • If no decode error is triggered, at least 16 bytes of the filename will be corrupted (randomized).
  • However, file names can always be truncated to multiples of 16 bytes.

Metadata

  • The file size is not protected against modifications
  • However, the block integrity protection limits modifications to block size granularity.
  • This means that files can be truncated to multiples of 4096 bytes.
  • Ownership, timestamp and permissions are not protected and can be changed

Master Key Storage

The master key is used to perform file decryption and encryption. It is stored in gocryptfs.conf encrypted with AES-256-GCM using the unlock key.

The unlock key is generated from a user password using scrypt. A sucessful decryption of the master key means that the authentication passed and the password is correct. The master key is then used to mount the filesystem.

Performance

  • 28 bytes of storage overhead per block (16 bytes auth tag, 12 byte nonce)
  • uses openssl through spacemonkeygo/openssl for a 3x speedup compared to crypto/cipher (see go-vs-openssl.md) for details

Run ./benchmark.bash to run the test suite and the streaming read/write benchmark.

The output should look like this:

$ ./benchmark.bash
[...]
BenchmarkStreamWrite	     100	  11816665 ns/op	  88.74 MB/s
BenchmarkStreamRead 	     200	   7848155 ns/op	 133.61 MB/s
ok  	github.com/rfjakob/gocryptfs	9.407s