There are a large number of effective encryption methods currently in existence that are designed to conceal information. However, in certain situations, the mere presence of ciphertext (encrypted data), can pose a threat, and lead to “unconventional means” by which a person may be “compelled” to turn over decryption keys. In such situations, a person's only safeguard is the concept of plausible deniability. Many implementations currently exist that provide what is referred to as “deniable encryption”, a method by which encrypted data on a disk cannot be discerned from random noise. The problem is that currently standard filesystems format disks to zeros and not random noise, so the existence of the random noise itself may be a security risk. deFS is an attempt to not provide deniable encryption, but deniable existence. That is, for any given filesystem, the deFS engine may be overlayed on top of it to produce hidden files. These files should be impossible (or implausible) to detect by examining the original filesystem itself.

A lot of research is being put into this project to ensure its viability. Currently the following topics are being heavily researched to provide methods of implementation:

I am planning to develop a Proof-of-Concept implementation using Linux and the FUSE (Filesystem in USErspace) libraries, as that would make it easier to lay over-top of any existing filesystems.