SoK: Untangling File-based Encryption on Mobile Devices
This work addresses security concerns for mobile device users and developers by providing a foundational analysis, though it is incremental as it formalizes and compares existing schemes rather than introducing new ones.
The authors tackled the lack of systematic comparison and security analysis of file-based encryption (FBE) schemes on mobile devices by developing a formal framework to study Android/Linux and iOS implementations, validating their security under standard assumptions like IND-CPA and INT-CTXT in the random-oracle model.
File-based encryption (FBE) schemes have been developed by software vendors to address security concerns related to data storage. While methods of encrypting data-at-rest may seem relatively straightforward, the main proponents of these technologies in mobile devices have nonetheless created seemingly different FBE solutions. As most of the underlying design decisions are described either at a high-level in whitepapers, or are accessible at a low-level by examining the corresponding source code (Android) or through reverse-engineering (iOS), comparisons between schemes and discussions on their relative strengths are scarce. In this paper, we propose a formal framework for the study of file-based encryption systems, focusing on two prominent implementations: the FBE scheme used in Android and Linux operating systems, as well as the FBE scheme used in iOS. Our proposed formal model and our detailed description of the existing algorithms are based on documentation of diverse nature, such as whitepapers, technical reports, presentations and blog posts, among others. Using our framework we validate the security of the existing key derivation chains, as well as the security of the overall designs, under widely-known security assumptions for symmetric ciphers, such as IND-CPA or INT-CTXT security, in the random-oracle model.