Abstract

In this paper we describe the design and the implementation of the Transparent Cryptographic File System (TCFS). TCFS is a cryptographic distributed filesystem (à la NFS). It lets users access sensitive files stored on a remote server in a secure way. It combats eavesdropping and data tampering both at the server and over the network by using encryption and message digest. Applications access data on a TCFS filesystem using the regular systems calls thus yielding complete transaparency to the users.

TCFS implementations for Linux, NetBSD and OpenBSD are available at https://www.tcfs.it