Poster: Hidden in plain sight: A filesystem for data integrity and confidentiality

Abstract

A filesystem capable of curtailing data theft and ensuring file integrity protection through deception is introduced and evaluated. The deceptive filesystem transparently creates multiple levels of stacking to protect the base filesystem and monitor file accesses, hide and redact sensitive files with baits, and inject decoys onto fake system views purveyed to untrusted subjects, all while maintaining a pristine state to legitimate processes. Our prototype implementation leverages a kernel hot-patch to seamlessly integrate the new filesystem module into live and existing environments. We demonstrate the utility of our approach with a use case on the nefarious Erebus ransomware.We also show that the filesystem adds no I/O overhead for legitimate users.