[tahoe-dev] idea for a research project: policy-based convergent encryption with least authority file system

[Tony Arcieri]

I'll toss my idea out there again: provide the option to add some random
data to the ends of capabilities. This random data, if present would
override the convergence secret, and the secret would be applied
hierarchically to all subdirectories.




On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 4:06 PM, Rohit Mehta <pigdog at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi everyone, as a research project I was thinking I might be able to
> work on a project related to LAFS, become more familiar with some of
> the code-base and hopefully make a contribution which might be be
> useful towards this project.
>
> My idea would be to implement some sort of policy based convergent
> encryption to help maximize deduplication without unnecessarily
> increasing the risk of "Confirmation of File" attacks. I am far from
> an expert in LAFS, but hopefully I will still be able to do some
> valuable work.
>
> I heard it mentioned that every user has a secret key which used as an
> additional secret to protect their data, so users can only deduplicate
> their own data.  However if a user is storing some data and they don't
> care about "confirmation of file" attacks (for instance freely
> downloadable PDFs), then they can zero out their key.  Additionally if
> an organization (or any group of individuals who trust each other)
> wants to deduplicate data within the organization (and be subject to
> intra-organizational risks but not extra-organizational risks) then
> that could be another convergent encryption policy.
>
> I can only imagine 3 types of convergent encryption policies.  Might
> there be more?  I think it would be possible to set policies as an
> option when creating files via FUSE (via extended attributes), the
> tahoe command line or via web-GUI, but probably not via sftp-FUSE.
>
> As I'm a newb when it comes to most of this work, I'm curious what
> other think. I'm hopeful I'll be able to contribute something to a
> great project.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Rohit
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-- 
Tony Arcieri
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