Skip to main content

An Implementation and Evaluation of Online Disk Encryption for Windows Systems

  • Conference paper

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 4332))

Abstract

The threat of loss of privacy of data due to the theft of hard disks requires that the data in hard disks is protected by means of encryption. In this paper we propose an implementation of a disk-driver-based sector level encryption for windows platforms. The implementation provides for strong security to the data at the sector-level, independent of the mounted file-system. The encryption of data is done at the granularity of partitions, leaving aside the boot partition, thus not affecting system boot-up process. Adapting a scheme proposed in the literature, the initialization vector is kept different for different sectors and is changed every time the sector is written into. The complete implementation is tested and evaluated using standard benchmark suites. The paper ends with a discussion on the usability of the implementation and future directions of its development.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Buying options

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Garfinkel, S.: PGP: Pretty Good Privacy, 1st edn. O’Reilly and Associates, Sebastopol (1994)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Whitten, A., Tygar, J.D.: Why Johnny Can’t Encrypt: A Usability Evaluation of PGP 5.0. In: USENIX Security Symposium (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Blaze, M.: A cryptographic file system for Unix. In: Proceedings of 1st ACM conference on Communications and Computing Security, pp. 9–16. ACM Press, New York (1993)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  4. Cattaneo, G., Persiano, G., Del Sorbo, A., Cozzolino, A., Mauriello, E., Pisapia, R.: Design and implementation of a transparent cryptographic file system for UNIX. Technical Report, University of Salerno (1997)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Microsoft Corporation: Encrypting File System for Windows 2000. Technical report (1999), www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/howitworks/security/encrypt.asp

  6. McDonald, A.D., Kuhn, M.G.: StegFS: A Steganographic File System for Linux. Information Hiding, 462–477 (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Wright, C.P., Dave, J., Zadok, E.: Cryptographic File Systems Performance: What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You. In: Proceedings of Second IEEE Security In Storage Workshop, p. 47 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Dowdeswell, R., Ioannidis, J.: The Cryptographic Disc Driver. In: Proceedings of the Annual USENIX Technical Conference, FREENIX Track (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Kamp, P.: GBDE - GEOM-based disk encryption. In: Proceddings of BSDCON 2003 (2003), http://phkfreebsd.dk/pubs/bsdcon-03.gbde.paper.pdf

  10. Latham, A.: ppdd - practical privacy disk driver documentation (2002), http://linux01.gwgd.de/~alatham/ppdd.html

  11. Hard disk encryption with SafeGuard®Easy, http://americas.utimaco.com/

  12. Draft Standard for Tweakable Wide-block Encryption. IEEE Computer Society Security in Storage Working Group (SISWG) (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Halevi, S., Rogaway., P.: A Parallelizable Enciphering mode. In: Proceedings of the CT-RSA, San Francisco, CA, USA, pp. 292–304 (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Liskov, M., Rivest, R.L., Wagner, D.: A Tweakable block ciphers. In: Yung, M. (ed.) CRYPTO 2002. LNCS, vol. 2442, p. 31. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  15. Hughes, J.: IEEE Standard for Encrypted Storage. IEEE Computer 37(11), 110–112 (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Naor, D.: Draft proposal for Key Backup Format for Wide block encryption. In: IEEE Computer Society Security in Storage Working Group (SISWG) (2004), http://siswg.org/docs/index.html

  17. Oney, W.: Chapter 4: Synchronization. Programming the Microsoft Windows® Driver Model. Microsoft Press, Redmond (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  18. AES Algorithm Efficiency, http://fp.gladman.plus.com/cryptography_technology/aesr1/

  19. Nbench, http://www.acnc.com/04_02_02.html

  20. Katcher, J.: Postmark: A New Filesystem Benchmark. Technical Report TR3022, Network Appliance, http://www.acnc.com/04_02_01.html

  21. IOMeter (2004), http://iometer.sourceforge.net

  22. Gibson, G.A., Meter, R.V.: Network attached storage architecture. Communications of the ACM 43(11), 37–45 (2000)

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Singh, V., Lakshminarasimhaiah, D.R., Mishra, Y., Viswanathan, C., Athithan, G. (2006). An Implementation and Evaluation of Online Disk Encryption for Windows Systems. In: Bagchi, A., Atluri, V. (eds) Information Systems Security. ICISS 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4332. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11961635_24

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11961635_24

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-68962-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-68963-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics