About

This repository contains my first Linux kernel module.
It was created as a project in the lecture “Operating Systems” at TU Wien.

The idea is that users can have secure storage.
The storage is managed by the kernel, and encrypted using a very basic encryption scheme.
Note that the implemented scheme is not meant to be secure, and serves simple demonstration purposes.

Usage

The project consists of two parts, the kernel module and a user program.
When the kernel module is loaded, it creates a device with which the vaults can be managed.
This device is located at /dev/sv_ctl.
The user program uses this device to control the vaults over an ioctl API.

This API allows the user to

• create a new vault with a specified size and encryption key,
• query the size of the vault,
• change the key of the vault,
• clear the data in the vault, i.e., set the content to zero, and
• remove the vault.

The number of vaults is limited to four, which could be increased easily.
When a vault is created, a new character devices is made accessible as /dev/sv_data[0-3].
This device can be used like any normal character device via open(), release(), seek(), read(), and write().