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Spideroak Kloak: Zero-Knowlege Social Networking
- andyburke 11y agoIs this just a loss-leader for their backup/storage service? I am a big fan of not being the product, but how does this make money?
- andyburke 11y agoNot to mention: if everything is encrypted using your password as a key, how do your friends see your posts? Are they encrypted for each friend with that friend's public key?
- darkstar999 11y ago> Are they encrypted for each friend with that friend's public key? That sounds about right. However this is a closed-source project, so I don't see why it would be picked up by privacy enthusiasts.
- ghayes 11y agoAside of the closed-source aspect, that is a great way to run a secure peer-to-peer messaging platform / social network. I believe this is how iMessage also encrypts communication.
- daviddahl 11y agoNo, it is fully open source from day one: https://github.com/Crypton/statusapp https://github.com/Crypton/statusapp
- falien 11y agoThis seems buried. Is there a reason it's not mentioned or linked on the kloak page? I actually went looking for the code and couldn't find that repository.
- daviddahl 11y agoThe link to the source code is in the about screen in the app. Hardly buried. I will have it added to the site, I was unaware of this.
- falien 11y agoThanks. I figured it was likely in the app, but for an experiment like this, that appeals to many of the ideals of an open source philosophy, I'm less likely to bother installing it if I'm unaware that it's an open source project. Obviously the appeal ultimately needs to be greater than just being open source, but that initial bump can't hurt the outcome of the experiment.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- nine_k 11y agoDoesn't GPG work in a similar way?
- dnix 11y agoThey could be encrypted with a random symmetric key that is then itself asymmetrically encrypted individually for everyone in your network and provided to them through some means. This is also how the OpenPGP works.
- daviddahl 11y agoYou share the (wrapped) post key with all contacts when you add them as contacts
- jcwilde 11y agoI would really love an answer to these questions.
- daviddahl 11y agoEarlier in the thread I mentioned that Kloak came about as a UX experiment in private social networking. We are building on these concepts in another project that is underway now.
- shuzchen 11y ago(disclaimer: i used to work at spideroak, but not on the crypton project) I would chalk this up to R&D. I don't think they'll make any money off of Kloak but they do want to bring crypton (the framework on which Kloak is built: https://crypton.io/ https://crypton.io/) into maturity. Another project of note associated with crypton would be the password manager Encryptr (https://spideroak.com/solutions/encryptr https://spideroak.com/solutions/encryptr). I'm not sure they want to replace their backup/storage service with crypton (although their backup service could use more collaborative features, so R&D into crypton could improve that), but they probably are looking into building other privacy focused products on top of which a better/mature/battle-tested crypton would be necessary.
- fweespeech 11y agoIts not a bad idea but its not better than existing products [e.g. TextSecure] in terms of actual privacy.
- sp332 11y agoEither show my location or don't. Randomizing in a four-mile radius is both compromising and useless.
- daviddahl 11y agoMaking the location fuzzy was a notion I had - it's still not great. One problem here is doing location name without calling any external APIs. We store all place names in the app. Not ideal.
- hackuser 11y agoHow about four options: ( ) Accurate location ( ) Fuzzy location (within 4 miles) ( ) Super-fuzzy location (state/country and time zone) ( ) No location
- daviddahl 11y agoyes! that is a much better set of options. I will file an issue.
- darkmighty 11y agoHow are you doing fuzzy locations? You're probably not doing it this way, but note that just adding a random 4 mile radius vector to the users location in insecure (against multiple samplings), you need to quantize it to a fixed set like a 4 mile grid or something like that. I remember tinder made this mistake and you could locate users very precisely anonymously.
- johann28 11y agoGrids are problematic because one can observe you at the boundaries, moving from one cell to another, so there are moments when you are very accurately localizable.
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- marcusestes 11y agoHm, could this be a business application of zkSNARK proofs? https://github.com/scipr-lab/libsnark https://github.com/scipr-lab/libsnark
- Ar-Curunir 11y agoThis thing doesn't really have anything to do with zero knowledge proofs.
- daviddahl 11y agoKloak's threat model is advertisers and data-miners. It is an experiment in private social networking. It is part of a set of new applications we are building at SpiderOak. Kloak is more or less a lab experiment in the UX of private systems.
- hackuser 11y agoI can't tell you how excited I am to see it. It seems to me that there is no good reason end users shouldn't control their social networking info, to use (e.g., via third party apps, to backup, to migrate) and share as they see fit. > threat model is advertisers and data-miners So many threat models I see are hackers and malware. Those are important, but much more widespread are the threats you identify. > It is part of a set of new applications we are building at SpiderOak. This has me much more intersted in SpiderOak. What else is in the pipeline, if you can share? > Kloak is more or less a lab experiment in the UX of private systems Great. Even if Kloak itself doesn't work out (and I hope it does) it could be a step forward for everyone. It seems like the path to building non-private system is very well-established, but those who want to give their users privacy have much more to invent on their own. So thanks for making it open source too.
- daviddahl 11y agoI dont think the NSA is the 99% threat model. It is data miners who are building up dossiers on all of us to sell to the highest bidder which will raise costs for all of us in the long run. think Insurance companies raising rates on how often you visit the online whiskey store. We also released a password manager called Encryptr, but there is a larger project underway that I won;t say anything about yet as I am not in Marketing, etc:)
- enoch_r 11y ago> I dont think the NSA is the 99% threat model. It is data miners who are building up dossiers on all of us to sell to the highest bidder which will raise costs for all of us in the long run. think Insurance companies raising rates on how often you visit the online whiskey store. If we banned life insurance companies from considering age or medical status, rates would not go down for everyone--they would go down for the elderly and the very sick, and up for everyone else. In exactly the same way, insurance company "dossiers" would not "raise costs for all of us"--they would raise costs for the risky and decrease costs for the less risky.
- level 11y agoI'm not an encryption guy, so I'm probably totally off base, but how does this work in terms of decryption? When you 'friend' someone, are you sharing your decryption key with that person? That seems very vulnerable to mass data collection when you start emailing it around to friends. Does each friend get a different key that you can disable if you believe they've been mismanaging your key?
- rifung 11y agoI don't know how they are doing it, but one way this could be solved is with assymetric encryption. If a person wants to see your data, that person asks you for it, and you use their public key to encrypt your data, send it over, and then they can use their private key to decrypt said data. I doubt they are actually doing it this way as I imagine the overhead would be very high, but it need not be as cumbersome as sharing a specific secret key for each person.
- tetrep 11y ago> I doubt they are actually doing it this way as I imagine the overhead would be very high It wouldn't be very high, they could easily put the burden on the client to do the encryption and like all practical public key encryption they only thing you encrypt with the public key(s) is a symmetric encryption key that the content is encrypted with.
- daviddahl 11y agoThe way people "follow" you requires you to add them as a contact. Your contact card is basically a public key, but in a more human-understandable form.
- free2rhyme214 11y agoThis is a cool idea but it'll be tough to get people to switch from FB and Twitter.
- daviddahl 11y agoThat is not the premise. The premise is that this is a parallel network for your trusted friends and family, off limits to the data-miners at FB and TWTR
- eps 11y agoThat's a good approach. And probably the only one. Just needs some form of vitality to help with spreading it, e.g. one-item sharing links/emails that double as invitations that auto-whitelist recipients as followers.
- spiralpolitik 11y agoPlayed around with it for 10-15 minutes. Looks like there are some good ideas in there but the UX on the iPhone version lacks polish. Not sure about the use of fixed width fonts. Will play around with it some more but it does look promising.
- daviddahl 11y agoThe source/tracker is here if you want to file issues, etc: https://github.com/Crypton/statusapp https://github.com/Crypton/statusapp
- plesner 11y agoReally like the idea. Unfortunately name might work against them in Scandinavia and other places where kloak means sewer (it has the same origin as "cloaca" in English).
- daviddahl 11y agoThat is an unfortunate naming problem. Kind of ironic as social media can be such a sewer!
- politician 11y agoI don't see how you can trust any of these sorts of privacy apps without compiling and side-loading them yourself. Even then, it's risky on a device you really don't control (f.e. Are we sure that the wi-fi radio that the FCC requires manufacturers to isolate from apps can't itself backdoor the device? Will we always be sure that the app developer won't ever update the software in a nefarious way?)
- daviddahl 11y agoThis is easy to do in this case, as the source is on github: https://github.com/Crypton/statusapp https://github.com/Crypton/statusapp. Also, you can run your own server if you like.
- legulere 11y agoThe greatest problem is adding friends. It's very important that this is very easy, without friends you can't communicate with anyone. Possibilities for making it easier that are still privacy conscious include IMO: Adding friends of friends. Adding people that are in your local wifi.
- daviddahl 11y agoThis initial version is is very deliberate about who you share with. The idea is that the user is always in control of who anything is shared with. One way to help create your social network will be an "opt-in profile page" that others can view and collect your card via. Its in the works.
- kijin 11y agoJust tried the Android app. The automatically generated xkcd-style passphrase is really cool, but the app insists on storing it in the operating system's credential storage with seemingly no other option. As it happens, I don't have credential storage enabled on the spare device I tested it on, so this was a bit annoying. I've dabbled with several messaging apps from Signal to Telegram and a bunch of others in between, and in fact this is the first time that an app tried to make actual use of Android credential storage. I wonder what the advantage is, and how other security-conscious apps like Signal are doing without it.
- daviddahl 11y agoYeah, Android < 5 is a PITA as there is no secure storage. I almost wish I could make this app require Android 5.
- ytjohn 11y agoI tested this out. I don't know anyone else to try with, so here is my contact card: https://goo.gl/photos/yhVvYGfy9Vepcp1h9 https://goo.gl/photos/yhVvYGfy9Vepcp1h9 I found one other person on G+ and imported their card. I saw it said "adding to trusted contacts". I assume it means that they can read anything I post. I went to timeline and saw nothing new from the other contact. I expect that because I'm not one of their trusted contacts, I can't see what they have posted. Then I went into contacts. I can view the new contact but not do anything I was expecting like adding to a group. The only thing I could do was delete the contact. Next I went to write a new post. There was no options I could find to choose my audience. All posts you make will end up going to everyone in your contact list. Hopefully there is a feature in the works to create something like streams or target groups. If I delete a contact, do they lose access to my posting key? Or do they continue to be able to access all future posts I make?
- daviddahl 11y agoMy contact card is here: https://twitter.com/deezthugs/status/654457605650255872 https://twitter.com/deezthugs/status/654457605650255872 I'll add you to my contacts now
- ytjohn 11y agoI added you as well. I am deltafoxzed on Kloak
- daviddahl 11y agoIf you delete a contact they will not see anything you post after that point in time
- mstade 11y agoI've been wanting something like this for a long time: a private network for those you trust and truly care about, offering actual privacy but without requiring my less-than-technically-inclined friends and family an easy way to opt in. I have hundreds of "friends" on Facebook, many I don't really know but think of as potentially useful contacts to have. It's like a more casual LinkedIn to me, you could say. Funny note: "kloak" means "sewer" in Swedish. An apt name for most social feeds, to be honest.
- kseistrup 11y ago— and in danish ⌘ https://twitter.com/kseistrup/status/675775244565655556 https://twitter.com/kseistrup/status/675775244565655556
- newscracker 11y ago@daviddahl, is there any reason why this is not available from a browser and instead seems to be available only through Android and iOS apps? If it's not available from a browser, is there a plan to introduce that (when)? It looks like desktops, laptops and other mobile platforms that have standard compliant browsers are completely ignored.
- dumaspere 11y agoHow would I keep up with developments from Spideroak? Their blog (https://spideroak.com/about/perspectives https://spideroak.com/about/perspectives ?) does not appear to have an RSS feed.