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This looks really great and I love the direction. Hopefully they're working on making it more consumer-friendly. ;) Questions: 1. They say that "While most so

by deprave 10y ago

This looks really great and I love the direction. Hopefully they're working on making it more consumer-friendly. ;) Questions: 1. They say that "While most solutions (Dropbox, GlusterFS, OwnCloud etc.) store your files unprotected in the cloud or on a specific server, we took a diametrically opposed direction by relying heavily on encryption. Whenever a file is stored in Infinit, it is cut into chunks, every chunk is encrypted with a unique key (AES-256) and stored, providing both encryption at rest and in transit." Isn't that actually a lot like Dropbox? (https://www.dropbox.com/en/help/27 https://www.dropbox.com/en/help/27) 2. How stable is FUSE for OS X? Last time I used it (couple of years) was for SSHFS and it was unstable and crashed the machine every now and then.

philjohn 10y ago
Dropbox deduplicate content ... so a file that several people have uploaded is only actually stored once. They also allow you to access your files over a web interface, and no decryption happens "in browser". So yes, DropBox most certainly have the decryption keys. Your data is protected at rest, and on the wire using TLS, but it's not end-to-end encryption.
- astrodust 10y ago
  Do you have any reference to their de-duplication system?
  - michaelmior 10y ago
    There is a blog post[0] which references deduplication. But apparently this may have been disabled[1]. [0] https://blogs.dropbox.com/dropbox/2011/07/changes-to-our-policies/ https://blogs.dropbox.com/dropbox/2011/07/changes-to-our-pol... [1] http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/54633/does-dropbox-no-longer-de-duplicate-files-across-users http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/54633/does-dropbo...
hlieberman 10y ago
I think the big difference they're implying (though I haven't been able to actually /verify/ the implication yet) is that Dropbox holds the keys to decrypt that content. Infinit doesn't.
- deprave 10y ago
  I see, that wasn't clear to me, thank you!
- JadeNB 10y ago
  > though I haven't been able to actually /verify/ the implication yet Honest question: how would you verify such a thing? Even if you audit the code, once they open-source it, how do you know that what you see is the same as what they run on their end? (Or do you mean 'verify' just in the informal sense of having them state that that is what they mean, rather than in some more formal trust-free sense?)
  - hlieberman 10y ago
    The first seems more important (no sense going through all the work of verifying something is true before making sure the authors are actually stating it!), but, both, really. In the latter case, you'd look at the software that /you/ run to validate that: 1. It's using some sane form of key generation. 2. It's actually using those keys to perform encryption on the files prior to them being transmitted. 3. The original files, as well as the key material, aren't read anywhere else in the code base not necessary to do the above two. Then, only run that version of the software. It's non-trivial, and generally expensive. This is why a lot of people prefer tools which call out to other trusted programs to actually handle the key management and encryption. Less complicated code to audit that way. (cf tarsnap)
  - wtbob 10y ago
    > Even if you audit the code, once they open-source it, how do you know that what you see is the same as what they run on their end? If it's actually secure, then the only thing which matters is what I run on my end, since the key would be generated on my end and the chunks would be encrypted on my end. If I send a server my data, then the system cannot be secure.
notacoward 10y ago
The part about GlusterFS storing files unencrypted is untrue, BTW. We've had full at-rest encryption using client-only keys for years before they came along. Makes me wonder how many of their other "original ideas" are just failure to do basic research before jumping in to make a buck.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  I was going to agree but decided to load up web site to be sure: https://www.gluster.org/ https://www.gluster.org/ I don't see a list of features at all here or an obvious link to them. Most sites have something like this (see "Why Sector/Sphere?"): http://sector.sourceforge.net/ http://sector.sourceforge.net/ Or this: http://lustre.org/about/ http://lustre.org/about/ Wait, that one almost sucks as much as GlusterFS site. It could also use a page detailing exactly what it can and can't do with obvious link on front-page. At least it had obvious link and basic description, though. So, hard to judge writer of recent post on what features were in GlusterFS, etc if their page doesn't go through the trouble to list them without us having to dig. I'd have to point two fingers. Fortunately, Wikipedia to rescue doing what site didn't do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GlusterFS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GlusterFS Note: Oh shit, it still doesn't mention encryption. Not in the comparison or list of distributed filesystems either. Still undocumented for casual researcher.
  - notacoward 10y ago
    Let me Google "GlusterFS encryption" for you. http://www.gluster.org/community/documentation/index.php/Features/disk-encryption http://www.gluster.org/community/documentation/index.php/Fea... https://www.gluster.org/community/documentation/images/e/e2/GlusterFS_transparent_encryption.pdf https://www.gluster.org/community/documentation/images/e/e2/... ...and more. I think that still falls under "casual research" ... besides which, implementers and promoters should be doing more than casual research anyway. The fact that the Gluster documentation sucks doesn't change that. Plenty of others have implemented such end-to-end encryption as well, and the trend is already increasing. (I find that quite gratifying BTW since I felt like a lone voice in the wilderness when I was writing about the importance of keeping keys on the clients five-plus years ago.) What they present as a differentiator is very much a me-too nowadays so, again, it calls their other claims of originality or uniqueness into question.
ccrone 10y ago
Sorry that I'm late to this thread! The first question appears to have been answered by others but I will add that even though Infinit is currently closed source, you can build your infrastructure without using the Hub. The Hub is just in place to make it easy to fetch user public keys, network and volume descriptors and endpoints at runtime. You can do this manually using the CLI (--export/--import instead of --push/--fetch). We're using the 3.x branch of FUSE for OS X and haven't had an issue with it yet.
fezz 10y ago
LTFS is based on FUSE and has support from all the major tape vendors. It's been pretty stable so far but does have some speed limitations.

by deprave 10y ago

philjohn 10y ago

Dropbox deduplicate content ... so a file that several people have uploaded is only actually stored once. They also allow you to access your files over a web interface, and no decryption happens "in browser". So yes, DropBox most certainly have the decryption keys. Your data is protected at rest, and on the wire using TLS, but it's not end-to-end encryption.

astrodust 10y ago
Do you have any reference to their de-duplication system?
- michaelmior 10y ago
  There is a blog post[0] which references deduplication. But apparently this may have been disabled[1]. [0] https://blogs.dropbox.com/dropbox/2011/07/changes-to-our-policies/ https://blogs.dropbox.com/dropbox/2011/07/changes-to-our-pol... [1] http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/54633/does-dropbox-no-longer-de-duplicate-files-across-users http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/54633/does-dropbo...

hlieberman 10y ago

I think the big difference they're implying (though I haven't been able to actually /verify/ the implication yet) is that Dropbox holds the keys to decrypt that content. Infinit doesn't.

deprave 10y ago
I see, that wasn't clear to me, thank you!
JadeNB 10y ago
> though I haven't been able to actually /verify/ the implication yet Honest question: how would you verify such a thing? Even if you audit the code, once they open-source it, how do you know that what you see is the same as what they run on their end? (Or do you mean 'verify' just in the informal sense of having them state that that is what they mean, rather than in some more formal trust-free sense?)
- hlieberman 10y ago
  The first seems more important (no sense going through all the work of verifying something is true before making sure the authors are actually stating it!), but, both, really. In the latter case, you'd look at the software that /you/ run to validate that: 1. It's using some sane form of key generation. 2. It's actually using those keys to perform encryption on the files prior to them being transmitted. 3. The original files, as well as the key material, aren't read anywhere else in the code base not necessary to do the above two. Then, only run that version of the software. It's non-trivial, and generally expensive. This is why a lot of people prefer tools which call out to other trusted programs to actually handle the key management and encryption. Less complicated code to audit that way. (cf tarsnap)
- wtbob 10y ago
  > Even if you audit the code, once they open-source it, how do you know that what you see is the same as what they run on their end? If it's actually secure, then the only thing which matters is what I run on my end, since the key would be generated on my end and the chunks would be encrypted on my end. If I send a server my data, then the system cannot be secure.

notacoward 10y ago

The part about GlusterFS storing files unencrypted is untrue, BTW. We've had full at-rest encryption using client-only keys for years before they came along. Makes me wonder how many of their other "original ideas" are just failure to do basic research before jumping in to make a buck.

nickpsecurity 10y ago
I was going to agree but decided to load up web site to be sure: https://www.gluster.org/ https://www.gluster.org/ I don't see a list of features at all here or an obvious link to them. Most sites have something like this (see "Why Sector/Sphere?"): http://sector.sourceforge.net/ http://sector.sourceforge.net/ Or this: http://lustre.org/about/ http://lustre.org/about/ Wait, that one almost sucks as much as GlusterFS site. It could also use a page detailing exactly what it can and can't do with obvious link on front-page. At least it had obvious link and basic description, though. So, hard to judge writer of recent post on what features were in GlusterFS, etc if their page doesn't go through the trouble to list them without us having to dig. I'd have to point two fingers. Fortunately, Wikipedia to rescue doing what site didn't do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GlusterFS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GlusterFS Note: Oh shit, it still doesn't mention encryption. Not in the comparison or list of distributed filesystems either. Still undocumented for casual researcher.
- notacoward 10y ago
  Let me Google "GlusterFS encryption" for you. http://www.gluster.org/community/documentation/index.php/Features/disk-encryption http://www.gluster.org/community/documentation/index.php/Fea... https://www.gluster.org/community/documentation/images/e/e2/GlusterFS_transparent_encryption.pdf https://www.gluster.org/community/documentation/images/e/e2/... ...and more. I think that still falls under "casual research" ... besides which, implementers and promoters should be doing more than casual research anyway. The fact that the Gluster documentation sucks doesn't change that. Plenty of others have implemented such end-to-end encryption as well, and the trend is already increasing. (I find that quite gratifying BTW since I felt like a lone voice in the wilderness when I was writing about the importance of keeping keys on the clients five-plus years ago.) What they present as a differentiator is very much a me-too nowadays so, again, it calls their other claims of originality or uniqueness into question.

ccrone 10y ago

Sorry that I'm late to this thread! The first question appears to have been answered by others but I will add that even though Infinit is currently closed source, you can build your infrastructure without using the Hub. The Hub is just in place to make it easy to fetch user public keys, network and volume descriptors and endpoints at runtime. You can do this manually using the CLI (--export/--import instead of --push/--fetch). We're using the 3.x branch of FUSE for OS X and haven't had an issue with it yet.

fezz 10y ago

LTFS is based on FUSE and has support from all the major tape vendors. It's been pretty stable so far but does have some speed limitations.