Navaho Gunleg

Bruce Schneier, on his blog, mentions the project Rubberhose that implements a ‘Deniable Filesystem‘.

The whole idea about these ‘deniable’ filesystems is, that, and I quote Bruce here:

The basic idea was the fact that the existence of ciphertext can in itself be incriminating, regardless of whether or not anyone can decrypt it. I wanted to create a file system that was deniable: where encrypted files looked like random noise, and where it was impossible to prove either the existence or non-existence of encrypted files.

So, Rubberhose implements such a system.

Interestingly, this will take laws to another level. Currently, ‘the existence of ciphertext can in itself be incriminating’, but in the future, possibly, ‘downloading the source-code or binaries of a project such as Rubberhose is incriminating’.

Of course, it isn’t — in my eyes everybody has a right to encrypt their data, but the usual thickheads in governments will definitely think otherwise.

Encryption, Rubberhose, Deniable Filesystem