Project Name | Stars | Downloads | Repos Using This | Packages Using This | Most Recent Commit | Total Releases | Latest Release | Open Issues | License | Language |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Gocryptfs | 2,897 | 8 days ago | 57 | January 27, 2022 | 43 | mit | Go | |||
Encrypted overlay filesystem written in Go | ||||||||||
Cryfs | 1,792 | 2 days ago | 122 | lgpl-3.0 | C++ | |||||
Cryptographic filesystem for the cloud | ||||||||||
Apfs Fuse | 1,388 | 3 months ago | 84 | gpl-2.0 | C++ | |||||
FUSE driver for APFS (Apple File System) | ||||||||||
Securefs | 633 | 5 months ago | 1 | February 27, 2018 | 14 | other | C++ | |||
Filesystem in userspace (FUSE) with transparent authenticated encryption | ||||||||||
Rar2fs | 233 | 5 months ago | 11 | gpl-3.0 | C | |||||
FUSE file system for reading RAR archives | ||||||||||
Acid Store | 78 | 2 | 2 months ago | 16 | November 23, 2021 | 1 | apache-2.0 | Rust | ||
A library for secure, deduplicated, transactional, and verifiable data storage | ||||||||||
Knoxcrypt | 50 | 3 years ago | 11 | bsd-3-clause | C++ | |||||
An encrypted filesystem | ||||||||||
C2fmzq | 24 | a month ago | 2 | gpl-3.0 | Go | |||||
Securely encrypt, store, and share files, including but not limited to pictures and videos. | ||||||||||
Mdsfs | 23 | 5 years ago | other | C | ||||||
Middle Stone Filesystem - An encrypting filesystem based on FUSE | ||||||||||
Cfcryptfs | 8 | 2 years ago | mit | Go | ||||||
An extensible encrypted filesystem implemented on FUSE (Filesystem in User Space) |
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.
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™.
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:
Install with Homebrew. macFUSE has to be installed beforehand.
brew install netheril96/fuse/securefs
Windows users can download prebuilt package from the releases section. It depends on WinFsp and VC++ 2017 redistribution package.
On Windows, you should encrypt the pagefile to avoid leaking sensitive data on disk. Run with admin privileges with the command fsutil behavior set EncryptPagingFile 1
before mounting a volume with securefs
.
Linux users have to build it from source.
First fuse
must be installed.
sudo apt-get install fuse libfuse-dev build-essential cmake python3
.sudo yum install fuse fuse-devel python3
.Then clone the sources by git clone --recursive
, and execute linux-build.sh
.
Install using packages (recommended):
pkg install fusefs-securefs
or ports:
make -C /usr/ports/sysutils/fusefs-securefs install
Make sure you load the fuse kernel module before using securefs:
kldload fuse
sysrc -f /boot/loader.conf fuse_load="YES" # Load fuse automatically at boot
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
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
.
See here.
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.