Design of a Concealed File System Adapted for Mobile Devices Based on GPS Information

Abstract

The Internet Security Threat Report by Symantec announced that the number of data breaches increased 23 percent in 2014 and the causes by theft or loss of devices reached to 21 percent. Carrying mobile devices with business data and private information is indispensable for human's social activities nowadays and unexpected data breach is one of the severe ongoing issues in cyber security. In this paper, we propose a concealed file system adapted for mobile devices based on GPS (Global Positioning System) information which is only mountable in the designated area. Differs from conventional encryption technologies, the proposed file system can be completely isolated from the viruses and attacks outside the designated area. Moreover, instead of the GPS information of the designated area, the encrypted hash value will be stored in mobile devices for the privacy concerns. We statistically analyzed the GPS information logged in our lab and defined an algorithm for deciding the designated area without leaking the GPS information. Based on the algorithm, we evaluated the proposed file system using Veracrypt by adding the hash of GPS information indicating the designated area as one of the attributes for mounting authentication. As a result, we confirmed that the proposed file system was mounted with about 91% success rate within average in the designated area even with noise interference.