From: xentrac@enzu.unm.edu (Kragen J Sittler)
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From: pgut1@cs.aukuni.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann)
Newsgroups: alt.security,comp.security.misc
Subject: SFS 1.08 beta released
Date: 18 Jul 1994 13:41:41 GMT
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I've just released the latest beta of my encrypting filesystem software.  
Hopefully this will be the final beta before the full release.  It's 
available from:
 
    ftp.informatik.uni-hamburg.de (134.100.4.42)
 
as:
    /pub/virus/crypt/disk/sfs_108.zip
 
Version 1.08 fixes a number of minor problems which cropped up in the 1.07 
beta.  The SFS release announcement follows.
 
Peter.
 
 
SFS (Secure FileSystem) is a set of programs which create and manage a 
number of encrypted disk volumes, and runs under both DOS and Windows. Each 
volume appears as a normal DOS drive, but all data stored on it is encryped 
at the individual-sector level.  Encrypted volumes can be loaded and 
unloaded as required, and can be quickly unloaded with a user-defined 
hotkey, or automatically unloaded after a period of inactivity.  They can 
also be converted back to normal DOS volumes, or have their contents 
destroyed.  The documentation includes an in-depth analysis of various 
security aspects of the software, as well as fairly complete design and 
programming details.
 
SFS has the following features:
 
  - The current implementation runs as a standard DOS device driver, and
    therefore works with both plain MSDOS or DRDOS as well as other
    software such as Windows, QEMM, Share, disk cacheing software, Stacker,
    JAM, and so on.
 
  - Up to five encrypted volumes can be accessed at any one time, chosen
    from a selection of as many volumes as there is storage for.
 
  - Volumes can be quickly unmounted with a user-defined hotkey, or
    automatically unmounted after a certain amount of time.  They can
    also be converted back to unencrypted volumes or have their contents
    destroyed if required.
 
  - The software contains various stealth features to minimise the
    possibility of other programs monitoring or altering its operation.
 
  - The encryption algorithms used have been selected to be free from
    any patent restrictions, and the software itself is not covered by
    US export restrictions as it was developed entirely outside the US
    (although once a copy is sent into the US it can't be re-exported).
 
  - SFS complies with a number of national and international data
    encryption standards, among them ANSI X3.106, Federal Information
    Processing Standard (FIPS) 180, Australian Standard 2805.5.2, ISO
    10116:1991 and ISO 10126-2:1991, and is on nodding terms with
    several other relevant standards.
 
  - The documentation includes fairly in-depth analyses of various
    security aspects of the software, as well as complete design and
    programming details necessary to both create SFS-compatible software
    and to verify the algorithms used in SFS.
 
  - Reasonable throughput and size.  One beta-tester has reported a
    throughput of 250 K/s for the basic version and 260 K/s for the 486+
    version on his 486 system when copying a file with the DOS copy
    command from one location on an SFS volume to another (I get about
    160 K/s on my vanilla 386 box). The resident portion requires 6.5K
    of memory, and can be loaded high if desired.
 
  - Direct access to IDE and SCSI drives is available for better
    performance and for drives which aren't normally accessible to DOS
    (for example systems with more than 2 hard drives).
 
SFS 1.1 is a maintenance release which fixes a few minor problems in 1.0, and
adds a number of features suggested by users (the current release is a the 
1.08 beta).  More details on changes are given in in the README file.