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For protection, I put all my files I care about on Dropbox. Is that enough? It's enough for backup for most things, but I worry attackers would be smart enough

by tgb 10y ago

For protection, I put all my files I care about on Dropbox. Is that enough? It's enough for backup for most things, but I worry attackers would be smart enough to kill it and also the old revisions that Dropbox stores.

ktRolster 10y ago
If enough people do that, then attackers will start attacking dropbox, as well.
- tgb 10y ago
  Hence my question. They'll ransom my Dropbox but Dropbox keeps deleted files and old versions around, so I'd be safe unless they specifically target Dropbox and Dropbox can't mitigate it.
  - lucb1e 10y ago
    Last time I used Dropbox, you can always get deleted versions back. They might make it difficult though, spamming the log with a gazillion created/deleted files. And maybe there is actually a limitation of, say, 10 deleted versions of the same file path (that might make sense)... but I don't remember seeing any of those limitations last time I looked at it (which was a few years ago). But if you are a concerned customer, why don't you just head over to their help pages and see what the features and limits regarding history and file deletion are?
    - majewsky 10y ago
      If there are certain restrictions to how far you can go back, they will likely find a way around that. If it's 10 versions of the same file path, they'll overwrite each path with a different single-byte file 11 times.
    - colejohnson66 10y ago
      Versions are kept for a month. I once had a few hundred versions of one file a while back.
  - mioelnir 10y ago
    I think there was at least one type out there that detected dropbox, encrypted those as well and deleted shadow copies.
varenc 10y ago
Dropbox has a help article on ransomware: https://www.dropbox.com/help/8408 https://www.dropbox.com/help/8408 For mass deletes that are cumbersome to recover using Dropbox's interface, that article mentions you can contact customer support to get assistance recovering from mass deletion events.
- tgb 10y ago
  Great thank you.
skore 10y ago
That actually happened to me. Friends of mine run a business I did some low level setting up of IT and design work for. Recommended they use Dropbox for important data in a folder I shared with them. One day, I keep getting notifications from Dropbox. Temporarily disable it on my machine because it annoyed the heck out of me. A few hour later, I get the "I think we have a virus" call. Turns out that me being annoyed means I now have a fully intact version of the data and nobody had to pay anything.

by tgb 10y ago

ktRolster 10y ago

If enough people do that, then attackers will start attacking dropbox, as well.

tgb 10y ago
Hence my question. They'll ransom my Dropbox but Dropbox keeps deleted files and old versions around, so I'd be safe unless they specifically target Dropbox and Dropbox can't mitigate it.
- lucb1e 10y ago
  Last time I used Dropbox, you can always get deleted versions back. They might make it difficult though, spamming the log with a gazillion created/deleted files. And maybe there is actually a limitation of, say, 10 deleted versions of the same file path (that might make sense)... but I don't remember seeing any of those limitations last time I looked at it (which was a few years ago). But if you are a concerned customer, why don't you just head over to their help pages and see what the features and limits regarding history and file deletion are?
  - majewsky 10y ago
    If there are certain restrictions to how far you can go back, they will likely find a way around that. If it's 10 versions of the same file path, they'll overwrite each path with a different single-byte file 11 times.
  - colejohnson66 10y ago
    Versions are kept for a month. I once had a few hundred versions of one file a while back.
- mioelnir 10y ago
  I think there was at least one type out there that detected dropbox, encrypted those as well and deleted shadow copies.

varenc 10y ago

Dropbox has a help article on ransomware: https://www.dropbox.com/help/8408 https://www.dropbox.com/help/8408 For mass deletes that are cumbersome to recover using Dropbox's interface, that article mentions you can contact customer support to get assistance recovering from mass deletion events.

tgb 10y ago
Great thank you.

skore 10y ago

That actually happened to me. Friends of mine run a business I did some low level setting up of IT and design work for. Recommended they use Dropbox for important data in a folder I shared with them. One day, I keep getting notifications from Dropbox. Temporarily disable it on my machine because it annoyed the heck out of me. A few hour later, I get the "I think we have a virus" call. Turns out that me being annoyed means I now have a fully intact version of the data and nobody had to pay anything.