UtahFS

UtahFS is a state-of-the art encrypted storage solution, meant to be similar to Dropbox. It has a FUSE binding that creates a synthetic drive on the user's computer that they can interact with like an external hard-drive. Files stored in the drive are uploaded to a cloud storage provider, which means the drive will never run out of space and minimizes the likelihood of any files being lost. However the files are encrypted such that the cloud storage provider knows almost nothing about what's being stored.

Features

1. Interchangeable Storage Providers. For storing data in the cloud, UtahFS uses Object Storage, which is cheap and commodified. Example providers include: AWS S3, Google Cloud Storage, Backblaze B2, and Wasabi.
2. Very Very Strong Encryption. The method of encryption hides the number of files, file names, file contents, individual file size, and prevents any modifications (including rollbacks!). The only information which is clearly leaked is the maximum archive size: archives grow to fit new data, but won't shrink if that data is deleted. Instead, that space is left allocated and will be re-used if needed in the future.
3. Local Hardware allows Multiple Users and Improved Performance. If the user has server-like hardware on their LAN (Rasberry Pi / Intel NUC), this can be used to coordinate multiple users operating in the same archive. It can also dramatically improve the performance of uploads, because a user can upload large amounts of already-encrypted data to the server over the fast local network, and let the server take over the much slower upload to the cloud provider.
4. Archive Mode. The client can be configured to guard against deleting or overwriting existing files, while still allowing new files to be created and old files to be moved around. This helps protect against accidental data loss.
5. Oblivious RAM (ORAM). ORAM can be used to hide the access pattern of data from the cloud storage provider, so the provider only sees the amount data is accessed. (Access pattern: Which pieces of data are being accessed, and whether the access was a read or write.)

How to Use

Setup documentation can be found in the docs/ folder.

Future Work

1. Reliability strategies for the WAL. Changes are buffered in a local Write-Ahead Log (WAL) before being sent to the cloud storage provider. If the disk that the WAL is stored on fails, it could become very difficult to return the archive to a usable, partially-regressed state.