ZboxFS
ZboxFS is a zero-details, privacy-focused in-app file system. Its goal is to help application store files securely, privately and reliably. By encapsulating files and directories into an encrypted repository, it provides a virtual file system and exclusive access to authorised application.
Unlike other system-level file systems, such as ext4, XFS and Btrfs, which provide shared access to multiple processes, ZboxFS is a file system that runs in the same memory space as the application. It only provides access to one process at a time.
By abstracting IO access, ZboxFS supports a variety of underlying storage layers, including memory, OS file system, RDBMS and key-value object store.
Disclaimer
ZboxFS is under active development, we are not responsible for any data loss or leak caused by using it. Always back up your files and use at your own risk!
Features
- Everything is encrypted :lock:, including metadata and directory structure, no knowledge can be leaked to underlying storage
- State-of-the-art cryptography: AES-256-GCM (hardware), XChaCha20-Poly1305, Argon2 password hashing and etc., empowered by libsodium
- Support multiple storages, including memory, OS file system, RDBMS, Key-value object store and more
- Files and directories are chunked into same-sized blocks to eliminate metadata leakage
- Content-based data chunk deduplication and file-based deduplication
- Data compression using LZ4 in fast mode, optional
- Data integrity is guaranteed by authenticated encryption primitives (AEAD crypto)
- File contents versioning
- Copy-on-write (COW :cow:) semantics
- ACID transactional operations
- Built with Rust :hearts:
Comparison
Many OS-level file systems support encryption, such as EncFS, APFS and ZFS. Some disk encryption tools also provide virtual file system, such as TrueCrypt, LUKS and VeraCrypt.
This diagram shows the difference between ZboxFS and them.
Below is the feature comparison list.
ZboxFS | OS-level File Systems | Disk Encryption Tools | |
---|---|---|---|
Encrypts file contents | :heavy_check_mark: | partial | :heavy_check_mark: |
Encrypts file metadata | :heavy_check_mark: | partial | :heavy_check_mark: |
Encrypts directory | :heavy_check_mark: | partial | :heavy_check_mark: |
Data integrity | :heavy_check_mark: | partial | :heavy_multiplication_x: |
Shared access for processes | :heavy_multiplication_x: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: |
Deduplication | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_multiplication_x: | :heavy_multiplication_x: |
Compression | :heavy_check_mark: | partial | :heavy_multiplication_x: |
Versioning | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_multiplication_x: | :heavy_multiplication_x: |
COW semantics | :heavy_check_mark: | partial | :heavy_multiplication_x: |
ACID Transaction | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_multiplication_x: | :heavy_multiplication_x: |
Multiple storage layers | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_multiplication_x: | :heavy_multiplication_x: |
API access | :heavy_check_mark: | through VFS | through VFS |
Symbolic links | :heavy_multiplication_x: | :heavy_check_mark: | depends on inner FS |
Users and permissions | :heavy_multiplication_x: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: |
FUSE support | :heavy_multiplication_x: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: |
Linux and macOS support | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: | :heavy_check_mark: |
Windows support | :heavy_check_mark: | partial | :heavy_check_mark: |
Supported Storage
ZboxFS supports a variety of underlying storages. Memory storage is enabled by default. All the other storages can be enabled individually by specifying its corresponding Cargo feature when building ZboxFS.
Storage | URI identifier | Cargo Feature |
---|---|---|
Memory | "mem://" | N/A |
OS file system | "file://" | storage-file |
SQLite | "sqlite://" | storage-sqlite |
Redis | "redis://" | storage-redis |
How to use
For reference documentation, please visit documentation.
Requirements
Supported Platforms
- 64-bit Debian-based Linux, such as Ubuntu
- 64-bit macOS
- 64-bit Windows
- 64-bit Android, API level >= 21 (in progress)
32-bit and other OS are NOT
supported yet.
Usage
Add the following dependency to your Cargo.toml
:
[]
= "0.8.2"
If you don't want to install libsodium by yourself, simply specify
libsodium-bundled
feature in dependency, which will automatically download,
verify and build libsodium.
[]
= { = "0.8.2", = ["libsodium-bundled"] }
Example
extern crate zbox;
use ;
use ;
Build with Docker
ZboxFS comes with Docker support, which made building ZboxFS easier. Check each repo for more details.
-
zboxfs/base Base image for building ZboxFS on Linux
-
zboxfs/wasm Docker image for building WebAssembly binding
-
zboxfs/nodejs Docker image for building Node.js binding
-
zboxfs/android Docker image for building Android Java binding
Static linking with libsodium
By default, ZboxFS uses dynamic linking when it is linked with libsodium. If you want to change this behavior and use static linking, you can enable below two environment variables.
On Linux/macOS,
On Windows,
And then re-build the code.
Performance
The performance test is run on a Macbook Pro 2017 laptop with spec as below.
Spec | Value |
---|---|
Processor Name: | Intel Core i7 |
Processor Speed: | 3.5 GHz |
Number of Processors: | 1 |
Total Number of Cores: | 2 |
L2 Cache (per Core): | 256 KB |
L3 Cache: | 4 MB |
Memory: | 16 GB |
OS Version: | macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 |
Test result:
Read | Write | TPS | |
---|---|---|---|
Baseline (memcpy): | 3658.23 MB/s | 3658.23 MB/s | N/A |
Baseline (file): | 1307.97 MB/s | 2206.30 MB/s | N/A |
Memory storage (no compress): | 605.01 MB/s | 186.20 MB/s | 1783 tx/s |
Memory storage (compress): | 505.04 MB/s | 161.11 MB/s | 1180 tx/s |
File storage (no compress): | 445.28 MB/s | 177.39 MB/s | 313 tx/s |
File storage (compress): | 415.85 MB/s | 158.22 MB/s | 325 tx/s |
To run the performance test on your own computer, please follow the instructions in CONTRIBUTING.md.
Contribution
Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in the work by you, as defined in the Apache-2.0 license, shall be licensed as above, without any additional terms of conditions.
Please read CONTRIBUTING.md for details on our code of conduct, and the process for submitting pull requests to us.
Community
License
ZboxFS
is licensed under the Apache 2.0 License - see the LICENSE
file for details.