IT Security Stack Exchange
IT Security Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [file-system]

A file system is a way of organizing information on a storage device like a computer hard drive.

A file system is a way of organizing information on a storage device like a computer hard drive.

201 questions
131
votes
9 answers

What stops Google from saving all the information on my computer through Google Chrome?

I noticed that in Google Chrome, if I type in file:///C:/Users/MyUsername/Desktop/ it shows me all of the folders on my Desktop, and I can type open up PDFs and such in chrome just by typing in the file path. What processes and systems are in place…
Pro Q
  • 1,349
  • 2
  • 7
  • 10
62
votes
6 answers

Unix execute permission can be easily bypassed. Is it superfluous, or what's the intention behind it?

The unix read permission is actually the same as the execute permission, so if e.g. one process has write access it's also able to execute the same file. This can be done pretty easily:First this process has to load the content of the file,which…
Martin Erhardt
  • 723
  • 1
  • 5
  • 9
48
votes
4 answers

Aren't keyfiles defeating the purpose of encryption?

I just added a drive to my system which is basically a partition mounted for extra storage. I'd like to encrypt it to protect my data in case of god knows what, and by doing that I'd need to enter the passphrase every time to unlock the partition. I…
php_nub_qq
  • 787
  • 1
  • 6
  • 13
33
votes
6 answers

How secure is NTFS encryption?

How secure is the data in a encrypted NTFS folder on Windows (XP, 7)? (The encryption option under file|folder -> properties -> advanced -> encrypt.) If the user uses a decent password, can this data be decrypted (easily?) if it, say, resides on a…
Martin
  • 1,247
  • 2
  • 12
  • 19
26
votes
5 answers

Permanently erasing a file

As far as I know, there is a table of files present in the hard drive that does not contain the data of each file but can point you to it. When you delete a file, the record of it gets deleted from the file table, but the data remains on the…
GuestBro
  • 277
  • 3
  • 3
22
votes
2 answers

What metadata from the Linux file system is in my uploaded photos?

Before uploading a photo or image to a forum, I may typically strip the metadata to remove identifying material with exiftool. The thing is, the Linux file system itself seems to leave some metadata on a file: cardamom@pluto ~ $ ls -la insgesamt…
cardamom
  • 359
  • 2
  • 9
22
votes
2 answers

Is NTFS encrypted by default?

Can an NTFS volume be read by forensics without having to log into the windows user or provide any passwords? aka can data be read straight from the sectors in clear text?
ZedPython
  • 339
  • 2
  • 5
22
votes
3 answers

I forgot to shred a file before deleting it (on Windows). How do I shred that part of file system now where the file was located?

My company has a policy that files have to be shredded after they've been read. They provide with a tool shred.exe that I run on the file and it overwrites it with garbage in the file system before unlinking it. Today I forgot to do that and I…
bodacydo
  • 829
  • 9
  • 14
21
votes
2 answers

At which point can a system be compromised when downloading archived data from an untrusted source?

If I download archived data from a possibly untrusted source at which point am I at possible risk of harming my system: Initially downloading and saving the archived data (still packed) Unpacking the archived data Executing any file from the…
T A
  • 329
  • 2
  • 8
16
votes
2 answers

Could you write custom data to a file of a specific extension and use it to hack a program once it opens the file?

From what I understand file extensions don't really affect the data contained within them at all. They just give your computer a hint of what the data is, how it's structured and your computer then finds the best program to deal with that specific…
Edward Severinsen
  • 187
  • 1
  • 1
  • 6
14
votes
3 answers

How to recover securely deleted data

Since we all know files are recoverable with programs after being deleted from the recycling bin, everyone is told to do secure wipes by putting random data over the files you're deleting on the disk itself. From what I understand with Hard Drives…
Canadian Luke
  • 296
  • 3
  • 13
13
votes
9 answers

Is there any asymmetrically encrypted file system?

Is there a file system providing a directory where everybody can write, but only the directory owner can read the files? In theory it could be done by encrypting using the public key while writing, but I see that it's much more complicated than…
maaartinus
  • 684
  • 5
  • 12
12
votes
1 answer

A filesystem with chunks hidden all over the internet?

I am wondering if there are any implementations of a filesystem (as in FUSE) that would allow me to host a file in chunks steganographically distributed all over the internet. The way I imagine it, the user needs a master URL with the first block…
d33tah
  • 6,524
  • 8
  • 38
  • 60
12
votes
4 answers

Why is it impossible to verify whether a file has been modified since creation?

From what I understand, it is impossible to verify whether a file has been modified since its creation. Specifically, I was wondering whether it was possible to verify whether a photo was modified since its capture. However, according to the…
Seanny123
  • 511
  • 2
  • 5
  • 13
12
votes
3 answers

Prevent acccess to the C drive on Windows systems

Is it possible to prevent regular users from accessing the C drive via Windows Explorer? they should be allowed to execute certain programs. This is to ensure that employees cannot steal or copy out proprietary software even though they should be…
Robin Rodricks
  • 379
  • 1
  • 4
  • 10
1
2 3
…
13 14