View Proposal

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Proposer

Adam Sampson

Title

Deterministic filesystem/archive format

Goal

Design and implement a filesystem (or archive) where the raw contents of the filesystem is uniquely determined by the contents

Description

In a typical filesystem, the contents of the disk depends not just on the files being stored, but other factors such as the order they were written in, previously-deleted files, the size of the disk, and so on. This makes forensic analysis of disk images possible - you can extract deleted files, or tell information about how the filesystem was built. Instead, I'm proposing that for any given collection of files, there should be exactly one valid representation of them on disk - guaranteeing that no information is being accidentally leaked. You would need to design the filesystem layout and build a tool to construct and verify the filesystem. Ideally you would then build a Linux kernel filesystem to read (and maybe modify) it. The real challenge comes in making it efficient to update later on...

Resources

Background

Url

Difficulty Level

Challenging

Ethical Approval

Full

Number Of Students

1

Supervisor

Adam Sampson

Keywords

filesystem, security, forensics

Degrees

Bachelor of Science in Computer Science
Bachelor of Science in Computer Systems
Master of Engineering in Software Engineering
Master of Science in Computer Science for Cyber Security
Master of Science in Computing (2 Years)
Master of Science in Information Technology (Software Systems)
Master of Science in Network Security
Master of Science in Software Engineering
Bachelor of Science in Computing Science
Bachelor of Science in Computer Science (Cyber Security)