Uniqueness of the file systems genome: Supporting arguments and massive experimental measurements

This paper provides evidence of a distinguished feature of file systems, that we call File System Genome. Such a feature is originated by the locations where the file blocks are placed on the mass-storage device by the operating system during the installation procedure. It appears from our study that the File System Genome is a distinctive feature of each operating system installation. In particular, our extensive set of experiments shows that the installation of the same operating system on two identical hardware configurations generates two different File System Genomes. Further, the application of sound information theory tools, such as min entropy, show that the differences between two File System Genome are considerably relevant. The results provided in this paper constitute the scientific basis for a number of applications in various fields of information technology, such as devices´ identification and security.