Assessing overhead cost associated with encrypting swap file

B. AlBelooshi, K. Salah, T. Marin, A. Bentiba

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

Privacy and security of information are two important concerns for most computer users. Passwords, keys, and encrypted information can be found unencrypted in the swap file which is used by the operating systems to support the implementation of virtual memory. Therefore, encrypting the swap file is essential to provide more security of users' private and confidential information. However, encrypting the swap file comes with an extra overhead cost. In this paper, we measure the overhead cost associated with encrypting the swap file. To effectively measure this cost, we developed our own benchmarks that will enforce heavy swapping with disk write and read operations. We measured the overhead cost for Windows 7 operating system. In our measurements, we considered a number of popular encryption algorithms which include AES, Blowfish, Twofish, and GOST. Our experimental measurements show that Windows 7 incurs considerable overhead penalties when encrypting the swap file.

Original languageBritish English
Title of host publicationProc. of the 11th IEEE Int. Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications, TrustCom-2012 - 11th IEEE Int. Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Communications, IUCC-2012
Pages1119-1123
Number of pages5
DOIs
StatePublished - 2012
Event11th IEEE International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications, TrustCom-2012 - Liverpool, United Kingdom
Duration: 25 Jun 201227 Jun 2012

Publication series

NameProc. of the 11th IEEE Int. Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications, TrustCom-2012 - 11th IEEE Int. Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Communications, IUCC-2012

Conference

Conference11th IEEE International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications, TrustCom-2012
Country/TerritoryUnited Kingdom
CityLiverpool
Period25/06/1227/06/12

Keywords

  • Encryption
  • Operating system security
  • Swap file
  • virtual memory

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