TL;DR: This article is a design exploration rather than a cryptographic proposal. It examines whether splitting encrypted files into independently stored fragments can reduce metadata leakage and make encrypted storage harder to analyze. The approach adds complexity and does not strengthen encryption itself.
1. The one-file-one-object problem
When people talk about file encryption, they usually focus on protecting file contents. If an attacker obtains a disk or a backup, the documents remain unreadable without the encryption key.
However, encryption does not necessarily hide everything about the storage.
Many encrypted storage systems follow a simple model: one original file becomes one encrypted object. The contents are protected, but the overall structure often remains visible. An observer may still be able to see how many objects exist, their approximate sizes, when new objects appear, and which objects change over time.
