Paranoid: A Global Secure File Access Control System

  • Authors:
  • Fareed Zaffar;Gershon Kedem;Ashish Gehani

  • Affiliations:
  • Duke University;Duke University;University of Notre Dame

  • Venue:
  • ACSAC '05 Proceedings of the 21st Annual Computer Security Applications Conference
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

The Paranoid file system is an encrypted, secure, global file system with user managed access control. The system provides efficient peer-to-peer application transparent file sharing. This paper presents the design, implementation and evaluation of the Paranoid file system and its accesscontrol architecture. The system lets users grant safe, selective, UNIX-like, file access to peer groups across administrative boundaries. Files are kept encrypted and access control translates into key management. The system uses a novel transformation key scheme to effect access revocation. The file system works seamlessly with existing applications through the use of interposition agents. The interposition agents provide a layer of indirection making it possible to implement transparent remote file access and data encryption/ decryption without any kernel modifications. System performance evaluations show that encryption and remote file-access overheads are small, demonstrating that the Paranoid system is practical.