A Web Based Covert File System

We present the idea of a web based covert file system, CovertFS. This file system allows a user to store files covertly on media sharing websites while guaranteeing confidentiality and plausible deniability regarding the existence of the files. Further, it allows for selective and covert sharing of these files with other users. CovertFS can be built on top of any web based media sharing service. The files are hidden within the media using steganographic techniques. The user can plausibly deny the existence of the covert file system since the existence of it cannot be proven. The media sharing service provider is oblivious to the existence of the file system within the stored media, providing them plausible deniability as well. Since the user files are completely hidden, it gives only the user complete control over his confidential files.

[1]  Adi Shamir,et al.  The Steganographic File System , 1998, Information Hiding.

[2]  B. S. Manjunath,et al.  Provably Secure Steganography: Achieving Zero K-L Divergence using Statistical Restoration , 2006, 2006 International Conference on Image Processing.

[3]  B. S. Manjunath,et al.  Determining Achievable Rates for Secure, Zero Divergence, Steganography , 2006, 2006 International Conference on Image Processing.

[4]  A. Adya,et al.  The Web File System: // File-like Access to the Web , 1995 .

[5]  Markus G. Kuhn,et al.  StegFS: A Steganographic File System for Linux , 1999, Information Hiding.

[6]  B. S. Manjunath,et al.  Statistical restoration for robust and secure steganography , 2005, IEEE International Conference on Image Processing 2005.

[7]  Oleg Kiselyov.  A network file system over HTTP: remote access and modification of files and files , 1999, USENIX Annual Technical Conference, FREENIX Track.

[8]  Mendel Rosenblum,et al.  The design and implementation of a log-structured file system , 1991, SOSP '91.

[9]  Kian-Lee Tan,et al.  StegFS: a steganographic file system , 2003, Proceedings 19th International Conference on Data Engineering (Cat. No.03CH37405).