Integrating the MKV Block Cipher into the ZFS File System

Abstract

In the context of ever-growing digital data in both scale and value, the need to ensure data confidentiality and integrity has become essential for modern storage systems. Among advanced storage solutions, TrueNAS, built on ZFS, stands out for its data integrity verification and encryption capabilities. Based on an analysis of ZFS characteristics, this article evaluates the feasibility of integrating MKV, a Vietnamese post-quantum-resistant block cipher, to enhance data security. Experimental results show that the proposed MKV encryption mechanism achieves a write bandwidth of 390 MB/s, compared with 608 MB/s for AES encryption and 774 MB/s for the non-encrypted configuration, while maintaining low CPU utilization. Although the proposed mechanism introduces performance overhead, the results demonstrate its feasibility for applications requiring enhanced data confidentiality with an acceptable trade-off between security and storage performance.