nuts: A secure storage toolset.

Introduction

The nuts library implements a secure storage library, where data are stored in a container. The container is divided into encrypted blocks. So a nuts container looks like a block device. All the things (e.g. keys) you need to open it are stored in the container itself. The library has a rich API, so it can be easily integrated into you application.

The container does not manage the encrypted data itself. It is transferred to a backend that is solely responsible for the persistent storage of the blocks. In this way, the data can easily be stored on different media or in different formats. The keys remain in the container and do not have to be stored in the backend.

nuts-container

The nuts-container implements the container itself.

Backend implementations

nuts-directory

The nuts-directory crate implements a nuts backend where the blocks of the container are stored in a file hierarchy. Each block is identified by an id, which is basically a 16 byte random number.

Applications

nuts-archive

The nuts-archive is an application based on the nuts container. Inspired by the tar tool you can store files, directories and symlinks in a nuts container.

Tools

The nuts-tool projects implements a commandline utility to maintain nuts container and its application.

Try it out

The easiest way to try out the nuts tool is in a Docker container:

docker pull dorobin/nuts

Then open a shell in a container:

docker run -it dorobin/nuts bash

root@92cdafaf933b:/# # you are inside the container
root@92cdafaf933b:/# # the nuts tool is installed as /usr/local/bin/nuts
root@92cdafaf933b:/# ls /usr/local/bin/nuts
/usr/local/bin/nuts

lib.rs:

A sample nuts_backend::Backend implementation which stores the data in memory.

This implementation is mainly used for demonstration, testing and documentation.

It stores the content of the data blocks in a hash indexed by the Id of this backend, where the id is a simple u32 value.