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One of the reasons Dropbox is successful is because anyone can use it. Even your mother. In fact, one of the reasons Drew was originally accepted into the YC
by palish 16y ago
One of the reasons Dropbox is successful is because anyone can use it. Even your mother. In fact, one of the reasons Drew was originally accepted into the YC program was because his sister was using it when he applied.
"If I can look at my data any time I want, I just need the key to it. Dropbox just gives me access to the encrypted stream."
In order for the data to be encrypted securely, you would need to generate a key on your own computer which Dropbox then uses to perform the encryption. (Tarsnap works this way.)
Forcing Drew's sister (or your mother) to generate a key would be bad for accessibility.
- shin_lao 16y agoThe authentication token can be generated and managed by the software. It would then be protected by the account password, if any (Windows and MacOS X offer this feature). Doable, and even better, you can make that a 30 € / month corporate option. ;)
- palish 16y agoIf the key file is stored on Dropbox servers, then Dropbox has access to all of your files. This defeats the original purpose (security). If the key file is not stored on Dropbox servers, then you can't easily use Dropbox across several different computers. This defeats the other purpose (accessibility).
- shin_lao 16y agoYou can store a key escrow on the dropbox server protected by a password or a token. Just a matter of designing something secure and useable. Not easy, but possible.
- piaskal 16y agoWhen you forget your password you'll lose access to all of your data. Password recovery won't be possible if the key is password protected.
- JoachimSchipper 16y agoThat doesn't work, Dropbox/your favourite TLA will just wait for you to supply the password and then save the key. Trading off the inconveniences of good crypto (e.g. no web interface) for that little security isn't worth it.
- caf 16y agoThe system suggested by shin_lao does not require that the password be passed back to Dropbox to retrieve the key.
- JoachimSchipper 16y agoIf Dropbox wants to serve the files to a standard browser, it does need the decryption key. If I misunderstood and shin_loa wants to drop the web interface, why "key escrow" - why not directly derive the key from the passphrase?
- oconnore 16y agoIsn't one of the major cool things about dropbox that if your computer hard drive gets smashed (and thus the key is destroyed), you can still access your files somewhere else?
- wahnfrieden 16y agoThat's why you should always keep backups of your key somewhere. Even on paper in a safe deposit box.
- ugh 16y agoWe are talking here about Dropbox being simple to use for everyone and you start talking about keeping backups of keys. In safe deposit boxes, no less. Wow.
- jrockway 16y agoYou don't need to worry about safe deposit boxes. Just don't be upset when you get a letter in the email from a law firm that's noticed some of the music in your dropbox has the same hashes as the music in someone else's dropbox. The cloud is a scary place. Making it easy to use is not necessarily a good thing.
- ugh 16y agoDe-duplication is not really the topic of this discussion, is it?
- stef25 16y agoFunny, when I visit my mom I use her computer for emergency bug fixes and I have my Dropbox installed on her computer. Every now and then I'll see a notification about a document being added to my DB so I checked and it turns out she's saving her documents there cause she "likes the name of the folder". So yeah, mom's can definitely use it.