What does it mean to say a EBS volume is encrypted, wouldn’t that mess up the file system, files? How the OS access it?

When an EBS volume is encrypted, it means:

  • Data is encrypted at rest using AES-256.
  • Data is encrypted in transit between the volume and EC2 instance.
  • Encryption is transparent to the OS.

How it works:

  • Encryption happens below the file system level.
  • The EC2 hypervisor handles decryption/encryption on-the-fly.
  • Your OS reads/writes as usual — no file system corruption or change needed.