Disk-level Data Tracing And Concealment In Zettabyte File System

Many researches and applications are based on data-intensive computing. With the advent of the Internet of Things, a massive amount of new data will be uploaded to and downloaded from the cloud. And this is in addition to the burgeoning amount of user-generated content. The data explosion is bigger than Moore's law. More data will be created in the next four years than ever before.As the volume of disk driver doubles every 9 to 12 months, file systems will be equipped with extra 64-bit addressing capability within 10 to 15 years. Among all the potential wide-address file systems, Zettabyte File System stands out as one of the most innovative, feature-rich, and future-proof 128-bit system. However, the literature on ZFS is very limited and not many researches provide pragmatic approaches.This paper introduces a solution to implement ZFS data tracing and concealment at disk level. By accessing on-disk data directly, we dig out all the metadata and file content for a designated ZFS file and establish a holistic view of data tracing. Afterward, we modify all relevant metadata to conceal a ZFS file. Meanwhile, data scrambling is adopted to enhance the security of the hidden data.The paper reveals some significant insights into the storage mechanism of ZFS. The data tracing can be applied to digital forensics or other researches of ZFS as an analysis tool. Owing to the unique design of ZFS, we can utilize the data tracing to recover data at a previous time. Combined with data scrambling, the data concealment dramatically boosts data security. It can defeat some smart intruders and protect sensitive user data from leaking.