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Let me be more clear. You are now Drew. You start this morning by visiting Hacker News. "Dear god," you exclaim, "I've been such a fool! We've been Doing It Ro

by palish 16y ago

Let me be more clear. You are now Drew. You start this morning by visiting Hacker News. "Dear god," you exclaim, "I've been such a fool! We've been Doing It Rong all these years!" Inspired by this new revelation, you spring out of your chair and out the door. You stride into "The Programmer Pit" and over to the new hire, backhanding him across the face. "Get the hell off of Portal 2! We have work to do! Jessica, go pick up four cases of Red Bull --- It worked at MIT, it'll work here." Now that you have Acquired Their Attention, you say, "Okay, here's-a what we gonna do. Step 1: Jimmy, I want you to ..." ... Now. What, exactly, fellow HNers, is Step 1? Fill in the blank. What, step-by-step, do you want Dropbox to do?

tomstuart 16y ago
Can't we all agree, at least, that step one should be to clearly admit that they lied? Maybe they don't need to do anything else. Dropbox is a fine service as it stands; security must be traded off against convenience, and the trade-off that Dropbox makes is acceptable to lots of people. They do have a responsibility to make sure that those people understand the trade-off, though, as well as a responsibility to admit that they've swept important details under the carpet in the past.
mike-cardwell 16y ago
Add an option to create secure folders which are encrypted client side, using a key which is only available client side. these folders wouldn't be usable with things like the web interface because there is no server side capability to decrypt their contents.
- palish 16y ago
  "But Drew!" Jimmy exclaims, "What if someone uses Dropbox at work and at home? Are these special folders going to be synced across computers? If so, how will the key be easily transferred (email, USB stick)? What happens when the user's hard drive crashes and his key file is lost permanently? Otherwise, if these special folders won't be synced, then what is the point of the folders being in Dropbox at all?"
  - mike-cardwell 16y ago
    Those are just minor implementation details. Off the top of my head, the key can be stored as a password protected file inside the Dropbox account its self, synced like any normal file, but perhaps hidden from the end user. The encrypted folders contents are synced like any others. On any client where you want to access the decrypted folder contents, you'd just enter the password to decrypt the password protected key and the folder contents would become available. If you forget the password then you're screwed. The only way Dropbox could access those files then would be to backdoor the Dropbox client. But if they were going to do that, it wouldn't even be safe to use TrueCrypt or GnuPG either.
- fluidcruft 16y ago
  Why wait? Do that today: use ecryptfs.
  - mike-cardwell 16y ago
    Will that work with the Dropbox clients on my Android phone, my Android tablet, my Windows desktop, my OSX laptop and my Linux server? If not, then it's no use to me.
    - fluidcruft 16y ago
      It works well for me (primarily linux, also Windows in a linux-hosted VM with dropbox served locally via samba). ecryptfs is standard on Debian and Ubuntu (very likely Redhat as they develop it). I have noticed some efforts to get ecryptfs running on the sdcard/data partitions in Android, but I haven't tried them yet. I haven't used Dropbox on Android since I learned their mobile client doesn't use https. As far as OSX goes, I don't know and I'm unlikely to care.
      - mike-cardwell 16y ago
        The Android and iOS mobile clients don't currently use HTTPS for transferring meta-data, but do for file contents. ecryptfs isn't a suitable alternative to my suggested solution which would involve all Dropbox clients having the capability built in. Of course, people who are really paranoid can use their own layer of encryption on top as well/instead.
        fluidcruft 16y ago
        Paranoid, functional, existing, and "unsuitable" trumps vaporware. :)
        mike-cardwell 16y ago
        Fair enough, but having something built in to Dropbox for people who value convenience wouldn't prevent anyone from using solutions like ecryptfs as well.
fluidcruft 16y ago
I resent that you sent the female to fetch drinks. Mix it up once in a while and send the queer.
eps 16y ago
1. Say "we take reasonable precautions to protect your files, but we are capable of accessing their content at any time."
- simpleTruth 16y ago
  I suspect the truth is closer to: "Our goal is for no single employee acting alone is able to access your files. However, there is a procedure where multiple people working in concert can recover your files and provide them to law enforcement. Unfortunately, it is possible for a hacker / programmer to create a backdoor and there is nothing we can do about this."

by palish 16y ago

tomstuart 16y ago

Can't we all agree, at least, that step one should be to clearly admit that they lied? Maybe they don't need to do anything else. Dropbox is a fine service as it stands; security must be traded off against convenience, and the trade-off that Dropbox makes is acceptable to lots of people. They do have a responsibility to make sure that those people understand the trade-off, though, as well as a responsibility to admit that they've swept important details under the carpet in the past.

mike-cardwell 16y ago

Add an option to create secure folders which are encrypted client side, using a key which is only available client side. these folders wouldn't be usable with things like the web interface because there is no server side capability to decrypt their contents.

palish 16y ago
"But Drew!" Jimmy exclaims, "What if someone uses Dropbox at work and at home? Are these special folders going to be synced across computers? If so, how will the key be easily transferred (email, USB stick)? What happens when the user's hard drive crashes and his key file is lost permanently? Otherwise, if these special folders won't be synced, then what is the point of the folders being in Dropbox at all?"
- mike-cardwell 16y ago
  Those are just minor implementation details. Off the top of my head, the key can be stored as a password protected file inside the Dropbox account its self, synced like any normal file, but perhaps hidden from the end user. The encrypted folders contents are synced like any others. On any client where you want to access the decrypted folder contents, you'd just enter the password to decrypt the password protected key and the folder contents would become available. If you forget the password then you're screwed. The only way Dropbox could access those files then would be to backdoor the Dropbox client. But if they were going to do that, it wouldn't even be safe to use TrueCrypt or GnuPG either.
fluidcruft 16y ago
Why wait? Do that today: use ecryptfs.
- mike-cardwell 16y ago
  Will that work with the Dropbox clients on my Android phone, my Android tablet, my Windows desktop, my OSX laptop and my Linux server? If not, then it's no use to me.
  - fluidcruft 16y ago
    It works well for me (primarily linux, also Windows in a linux-hosted VM with dropbox served locally via samba). ecryptfs is standard on Debian and Ubuntu (very likely Redhat as they develop it). I have noticed some efforts to get ecryptfs running on the sdcard/data partitions in Android, but I haven't tried them yet. I haven't used Dropbox on Android since I learned their mobile client doesn't use https. As far as OSX goes, I don't know and I'm unlikely to care.
    - mike-cardwell 16y ago
      The Android and iOS mobile clients don't currently use HTTPS for transferring meta-data, but do for file contents. ecryptfs isn't a suitable alternative to my suggested solution which would involve all Dropbox clients having the capability built in. Of course, people who are really paranoid can use their own layer of encryption on top as well/instead.
      - fluidcruft 16y ago
        Paranoid, functional, existing, and "unsuitable" trumps vaporware. :)
        mike-cardwell 16y ago
        Fair enough, but having something built in to Dropbox for people who value convenience wouldn't prevent anyone from using solutions like ecryptfs as well.

fluidcruft 16y ago

I resent that you sent the female to fetch drinks. Mix it up once in a while and send the queer.

eps 16y ago

1. Say "we take reasonable precautions to protect your files, but we are capable of accessing their content at any time."

simpleTruth 16y ago
I suspect the truth is closer to: "Our goal is for no single employee acting alone is able to access your files. However, there is a procedure where multiple people working in concert can recover your files and provide them to law enforcement. Unfortunately, it is possible for a hacker / programmer to create a backdoor and there is nothing we can do about this."