Filesystem Wars: Why Your Choice of Storage is Actually a Security Move
Summary
The article surveys six filesystems (FFS/UFS2, ZFS, BFS, NTFS, ext4, APFS) focusing on crash-consistency mechanisms (journaling, soft updates, Copy-on-Write), security models, and encryption. It explains how CoW designs (ZFS, APFS) provide stronger data integrity and security boundaries, contrasts with traditional in-place overwriting in NTFS/ext4, and discusses operational assumptions, weaknesses, and implications for modern OS hardening.