Datumnode

Project Title

Datumnode

Project Area of Specialization Cyber SecurityProject Summary

The ubiquity of internet and mobile services has produced enormous amount of data, not just for corporates but for individuals as well. This mammoth use of internet is basically triggered by the use of smartphones. Nearly 3 Billion people use smartphones across the globe while 21 percent of Pakistan’s nearly 220 million population rely heavily on mobile internet services. This phenomenon gave rise to a lot of storage issues at the user end thereby giving rise to the cloud technology whereby data and services are hosted by the third party. A lot of service providers, especially the big technology giants offer storage and processing services and now our entire digital life (photos, emails, calendar, files, videos etc.) resides with them. In this case, user is not the only one having control over his data and resources, thereby breeding a bunch of trust issues for everyone who is privacy conscious and does not want these big companies to spy on them.  ‘DatumNode’ provides a solution to this critical problem for all privacy conscious people and smaller organizations. It protects files, photos, media, contacts and other important data by storing it on a device of your own. It would also offer a personalized email domain, a secure chat between consumers and can also act as a VPN to further protect users’ online activity. ’DatumNode’ would basically appear as a reasonable and secure substitute for these free storage services so that only the user controls his/her data. ’DatumNode’ can also support limited number of multiple users in order to make it useful for smaller organizations. It would be a hardware device with large storage and processing capacity along with a network interface that can be accessed over the internet. DatumNode provides you with the following features EMAIL Own your email and control the root of your online identity. Send private emails, have unlimited email accounts, and aliases. FILES Share, sync and backup files and photos across all your devices. All files are AES encrypted. VPN ?Keep your online activity private and secure from untrusted networks. CHAT Private and secure communication with end-to-end encryption between all connected users. MULTIPLE USER FUNCTIONALITY Multiple users will be able to use DatumNode.

The ubiquity of internet and mobile services has produced enormous amount of data, not just for corporates but for individuals as well. This mammoth use of internet is basically triggered by the use of smartphones. Nearly 3 Billion people use smartphones across the globe while 21 percent of Pakistan’s nearly 220 million population rely heavily on mobile internet services. This phenomenon gave rise to a lot of storage issues at the user end thereby giving rise to the cloud technology whereby data and services are hosted by the third party. A lot of service providers, especially the big technology giants offer storage and processing services and now our entire digital life (photos, emails, calendar, files, videos etc.) resides with them. In this case, user is not the only one having control over his data and resources, thereby breeding a bunch of trust issues for everyone who is privacy conscious and does not want these big companies to spy on them.

 ‘DatumNode’ provides a solution to this critical problem for all privacy conscious people and smaller organizations. It protects files, photos, media, contacts and other important data by storing it on a device of your own. It would also offer a personalized email domain, a secure chat between consumers and can also act as a VPN to further protect users’ online activity. ’DatumNode’ would basically appear as a reasonable and secure substitute for these free storage services so that only the user controls his/her data. ’DatumNode’ can also support limited number of multiple users in order to make it useful for smaller organizations. It would be a hardware device with large storage and processing capacity along with a network interface that can be accessed over the internet.

DatumNode provides you with the following features

EMAIL
Own your email and control the root of your online identity.

Send private emails, have unlimited email accounts, and aliases.

FILES
Share, sync and backup files and photos across all your devices.

All files are AES encrypted.

VPN
?Keep your online activity private and secure from untrusted networks.

CHAT

Private and secure communication with end-to-end encryption between all connected users.

MULTIPLE USER FUNCTIONALITY

Multiple users will be able to use DatumNode.

Project Objectives

• To come up with a personalized hardware based solution for secure data storage and retrieval.
• Windows and Android UI’s to ease client’s access to all the services provided by DatumNode.
• Protect the sensitive contents of your inbox and communicate privately by email using a  custom domain.
• A VPN to hide online activity.
• A secure chat app for all users connected to Datumnode.
• Datumnode server to be as secure as possible with reliable authentication to access.
• This would open further avenues of research in the security and privacy domain as it can be further enhanced to make the product commercially viable.

Project Implementation Method

Connect

A user would be able to connect through our applications on both Windows or Android phone . For Windows, DatumNode client will initiate a secure SSH connection. Before initiating a tunnel, a user will be asked to authenticate his/her credentials.

Sync

A user should be able to sync data from his desktop/ mobile app anywhere anytime on to the DatumNode server. The syncing mechanism is python scripted utilizing the SFTP library. An SSH client is created at first followed by the SFTP. Files to be synced go through the MD-5 Hashing algorithm to check their integrity. Lastly, all these processes are wrapped in a GUI.

Encryption

AES-128 symmetric encryption algorithm will be used for this process. Files will be synced only when encrypted at first. The server will host encrypted files. The application is designed to decrypt all the files at that very moment, the files are retrieved. Furthermore, the chat application is end-to-end encrypted

Email Server

We have set up our email server using IRedMail. It configures all necessary mail server components. Open-source software used in iRedMail:

• Postfix SMTP server
• Dovecot IMAP server
• Apache, Nginx
• OpenLDAP, ldapd
• MySQL/MariaDB, PostgreSQL
• Amavised-new
• SpamAssassin
• ClamAV
• Roundcube webmail
• SOGo Groupware
• Fail2ban
• Awstats
• iRedAPD Postfix policy server[WU1] 

VPN

An open source VPN is implemented on to the server. This will allow users to safely browse the web.

Benefits of the Project

Relying on public cloud services like Google, Microsoft etc. comes with a price as our entire digital life resides there. DatumNode provides you the services to securely store and manage useful and critical data on a device you own. It comes with a secure chat, personalized email server and a VPN application as well. This hardware device can be placed anywhere the user wants let it be his home or workplace .It is an all-in-one product that is ideal for all those privacy conscious users. The product can be customized and comes with a dedicated hardware with good storage and processing. This product can be used on a wider scale by defense sector and security researchers.

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

To develop an indigenous solution that acts as a personalized data repository for its constituents, we've made use of Software Windows 10 Linux (Ubuntu) PyCharm 2019.2.2 Android Studio JSON/DART Hardware  Mini PC(4/8 GB)[WU2]  Storage SSD Storage (256GB+) Amazon Web Services Symmetric Encryption(AES) Hashing(MD5/SHA 256)

To develop an indigenous solution that acts as a personalized data repository for its constituents, we've made use of

Software

• Windows 10
• Linux (Ubuntu)
• PyCharm 2019.2.2
• Android Studio
• JSON/DART

Hardware

 Mini PC(4/8 GB)[WU2] 

Storage

SSD Storage (256GB+)

Amazon Web Services

Symmetric Encryption(AES)

Hashing(MD5/SHA 256)

Final Deliverable of the Project Hardware SystemCore Industry EducationOther Industries IT , Security Core Technology OthersOther TechnologiesSustainable Development Goals Industry, Innovation and InfrastructureRequired Resources

To develop an indigenous solution that acts as a personalized data repository for its constituents, we've made use of Software Windows 10 Linux (Ubuntu) PyCharm 2019.2.2 Android Studio JSON/DART Hardware  Mini PC(4/8 GB)[WU2]  Storage SSD Storage (256GB+) Amazon Web Services Symmetric Encryption(AES) Hashing(MD5/SHA 256)