How would you protect files of a VPS (Virtual Private Server) from snooping by the service provider?
Depends on your threat model and actual realistic concerns.
Ultimately, if it comes down to it, there’s very little you can do that’s failsafe and 100% guaranteed: the provider has access to your disk, all data in your instances RAM (including encryption keys), and can watch your processes execute in real time and see even the specific instructions your vCPU is executing.
Don’t put illegal shit on hardware you do not physically own and have physical control over, and encrypt everything else but like, if the value of your shit is high enough, you’re fucked if you’re using someone else’s computer.
I mean, if you’re doing to do illegal shit (eg journalism), it is best done on a VPS. This is what basically every military and cyber mercenary orgs do.
Just make sure you only log into the box over Tor, and configure it to only pass data out over Tor. Use it as a jump box. Even if they compromise it, it should tell them nothing about you useful for attribution
Intel is pushing there “encrypted enclave” which supposedly protects the host from being able to read or write guest memory. However, I have serious doubt as it is a black box system. It also is very problematic when a security issue (or backdoor) is found as your data is basically exposed
Ultimately you are right about this which is sad. I wonder if at some point there could be a zero knowledge cache for https. Maybe double encrypt it and have the client decrypt it fully.
You don’t really. Treat it as totally untrusted
Encrypt them before they’re ever put there. One example I can think of is in resilio sync, which has the option for sharing a folder to an encrypted peer. Other peers encrypt it before sending anything, that peer doesn’t have the decryption keys at all.
It depends what you want to do with it. If it’s just for storing files/backups then encrypt them before uploading and make sure the key never goes anywhere near the VPS. If it’s for serving up something like a simple website, you probably care more about data integrity than exfiltration, so make sure you have the security, including selinux or equivalent, locked down, and regularly run integrity checks. If it’s for running something interactive, or where data will be generated or downloaded to the machine, you’re out of luck, there’s no even theoretical way of securing that against an adversary with that much access.
