Hiding data accesses in steganographic file system

Abstract

To support ubiquitous computing, the underlying data have to be persistent and available anywhere-anytime. The data thus have to migrate from devices local to individual computers, to shared storage volumes that are accessible over open network This potentially exposes the data to heightened security risks. We propose two mechanisms, in the context of a steganographic file system, to mitigate the risk of attacks initiated through analyzing data accesses from user applications. The first mechanism is intended to counter attempts to locate data through updates in between snapshots - in short, update analysis. The second mechanism prevents traffic analysis - identifying data from I/O traffic patterns. We have implemented the first mechanism on Linux and conducted experiments to demonstrate its effectiveness and practicality. Simulation results on the second mechanism also show its potential for real world applications.