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Dropbox Lied to Users about Data Security, Complaint to FTC Alleges

251 points by schwanksta 15y ago

awakeasleep 15y ago
Gah. I just told our corporate counsel that it was ok to use Dropbox because everything was secured "even the app" and all the files were encrypted on Dropbox's site.
- rdl 15y ago
  It's all relative. The problem was somewhat (unintentionally?) misleading marketing and disclosure, not their actual architecture, at least for most uses of dropbox. Dropbox seems to have decent transport security, which is more than 99% of apps. Keeping files in dropbox might also keep unencrypted and out of date copies from persisting on local drives, random USB thumb drives, borrowed computers, computers at the print shop, etc. Yes, someone who compromises dropbox, or a rogue high-level dropbox employee, or a law enforcement officer with a warrant, could get access to your files on disk at dropbox. Dropbox is probably not the weak link, though. For a normal user (individual or corporate), trusting dropbox is not any worse than trusting gmail or anyone else who has your data and has market, legal, and other reasons to keep it safe for you. I've met with a bunch of top-tier attorneys in the past couple weeks, and none of them want to mess with PGP; they trust that if gmail or an outsourced exchange provider were snooping on their messages, there would be legal recourse; sure, it's an issue if there's no way to prove it, but generally they are pretty trusting of major service providers. I personally don't use dropbox for anything except "public" files, because I try to constrain long-term storage of my data to my own infrastructure, or something encrypted end to end and fully under my control. However, dropbox is probably a cut above the effective level of security most organizations or individuals have in practice. I'd sure prefer if dropbox did client-side encryption and never had access to the keys, but then you'd also need to trust that the dropbox binary doesn't secretly send your password to Russia, and that no future version of the dropbox binary that you use has the send-to-Russia feature added. And, you'd need to trust that none of the devices from which you access dropbox has been keyloggered, trojaned, etc. Of course, dropbox seems pretty robust in terms of availability; I just lost an SSD which didn't have timely backups of certain files, something which is going to ruin my weekend and which would have been avoided had I been less paranoid and used dropbox more. (and, I'm working on solving the issues with trusting remote services, actually...)
  - mtogo 15y ago
    | Dropbox seems to have decent transport security Unless you're using the mobile app. | For a normal user (individual or corporate), trusting dropbox is not any worse than trusting gmail or anyone else who has your data and has market, legal, and other reasons to keep it safe for you. Except Google doesn't (afaik) lie about their ability to en/decrypt or view your personal data.
    - rdl 15y ago
      Yeah, both points are true. At least it looks like they are fixing the mobile app ssl thing. I think lying is a bit excessive as a description; they were misleading, hopefully unintentionally, on something where full and clear disclosure would have been a better standard. It isn't like Crypto AG or other famous vendor vs. users situations, though. Ascribing malice to them seems inappropriate.
- armored 15y ago
  Encrypt with Truecrypt, share with Dropbox. Problem solved.
  - rdl 15y ago
    Except then you can't use those files on mobile devices or from the web UI, both of which are useful (my primary interest in dropbox, and the one thing I can't trivially accomplish on my own, is the iOS device support. The alternative is just to use Apple's iDisk, which has exactly the same risks as Dropbox, minus the cross-platform capabilities.)
    - armored 15y ago
      I'm not sure if it's helpful to you, but I use Keypass & Dropbox to sync some encrypted data to my Android phone. It's limited but useful for storing sensitive text. There is an iPhone app: http://ikeepass.de/ http://ikeepass.de/
      - rdl 15y ago
        I use 1password and wifi syncing. I asked them to add WebDAV support to store the bundle, which is how omnifocus does this, which is probably the most cloudiness I will accept for my password file.
  - sigil 15y ago
    > Encrypt with Truecrypt, share with Dropbox. Problem solved. Not so fast. How big is the binary diff when you change a file within a Truecrypt volume? Ie, how much Dropbox bandwidth will you be using, even with a small change? I performed the following experiment. Start with a 250M Truecrypt volume. Mount it. Create a 1M file from /dev/random. Unmount the volume. Now, look at what blocks in the Truecrypt volume file have changed. Dropbox uses a 4M blocksize [1]. seq 0 63 | while read i; do { dd bs=4M skip=$i count=0; dd bs=4M count=1; } < truecrypt.bin.before | md5sum done 2>/dev/null | sort > md5s.before seq 0 63 | while read i; do { dd bs=4M skip=$i count=0; dd bs=4M count=1; } < truecrypt.bin.after | md5sum done 2>/dev/null | sort > md5s.after comm -13 md5s.before md5s.after | wc -l 8 Conclusion: in this case, Dropbox will transfer 32M (8x the normal 4M) because I added a 1M file to my Truecrypt volume. Note: I haven't tried adding bigger files, but suspect the number of blocks changed will go up linearly but steeply with the size of the added file. It's not actually that surprising that TrueCrypt mixes file changes throughout the volume file. Why bring this all up? Because something that does client side block encryption (tarsnap is an example) would only transfer the affected block. 4M, if that's the block size. And you don't have to trust the cloud storage provider at all. EDIT: My pipelines were wrong on the first go, suggesting a much larger number of differing blocks. Sorry about that. [1] http://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=17631 http://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=17631
huhtenberg 15y ago
Can anyone speculate as to what the ultimate goal of bringing this to FTC's attention is?
- DenisM 15y ago
  From the article: ...charges that Dropbox “has and continues to make deceptive statements to consumers regarding the extent to which it protects and encrypts therir data,” which amounts to a deceptive trade practice that can be investigated by the FTC.
- tshtf 15y ago
  Christopher Soghoian[1] filed the complaint. I would assume he was concerned with the deceptive practices of Dropbox? [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Soghoian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Soghoian
  - kenjackson 15y ago
    This guy is one busy grad student. Didn't realize he got the Facebook story out too.
- suking 15y ago
  To waste $. Why aren't they going after the mortgage fraudsters and bankers? Dropbox is way more important than that right?
  - codeup 15y ago
    If only they had people like Soghoian dealing with problems in other industries...
  - jerrya 15y ago
    Fallacy of the excluded middle.
dhouston 15y ago
just so everyone knows, this complaint raises old issues that we addressed in our public blog post a few weeks ago: http://blog.dropbox.com/?p=735 http://blog.dropbox.com/?p=735
- kenjackson 15y ago
  People have asked why Dropbox servers need to decrypt user data. The reason is many of the most popular Dropbox features — like accessing your files from the website, creating file previews, and sharing files with other people — would either not be possible or would be much more cumbersome without this capability. Accessing files from the website and file previews can use a key that I give you when I login. The only one where you need to have a key is if I share the file with someone. Can't you throw up a prompt when I elect to share a file that says, "This file will now be accessible to person XYZ. In order to do this DropBox will re-encrypt with our own private key"? I suspect a lot of people don't share most/all of their files with anyone. It would be nice to have privacy by default and then opt-out when they decide to share it.
  - runningdogx 15y ago
    That would prevent de-duplication in the non-shared case, which as I understand it is important to Dropbox for increasing storage efficiency. I suspect that is the primary reason why they don't have an option to "store encryption key locally only" in the client. The excuse that users expect to be able to share and access files on the web can be overcome with a big scary warning indicating that is not possible when using client-side-only encryption keys. Dropbox advocates TrueCrypt in one breath, but refuses to integrate client-only encryption keys in the client with the next breath. Obviously they know what we all know: TrueCrypt presents a poor UX for non-technical users, and so most people won't use it even if it's recommended. Then DropBox gets to be the hero for advocating TrueCrypt while they get de-dup efficiency because they know few people actually bother using TrueCrypt. Any transfer of keys to dropbox, even temporally, means your data on dropbox should be considered insecure. You have no way to know what's going on on the dropbox side. The same issue arises for CAs that let customers generate SSL keys within a web interface, to avoid the nuisance of having to generate a key/cert/csr themselves and uploading that. It doesn't matter if the CA promises never to store the private key. It's insecure and it's bad practice.
pg 15y ago
I feel like I should point out that this article isn't about the FTC doing something, but about a private individual filing a complaint with the FTC, which anyone can do. I like Ryan Singel. He was the first reporter to write about YC. So I can't really begrudge him the pageviews he knew he'd get from HN over this. But 'taint really news.
- mestudent 15y ago
  Can anyone explain to me how the article or even title of the article would make someone think the FTC was doing something and then require such a statement from pg? It is referenced in both as a complaint and is news for wired readers, not necessarily here (though the FTC complaint being filed here is new).
  - schwanksta 15y ago
    That was my fault. I originally wrote the hed as "FTC Complaint: Dropbox Lied to Users about Data Security", which I thought would get around people reading just the "Dropbox Lied To Users" part. PG changed it to the hed from the article, I suppose to make sure nobody thought the complaint originated from the FTC.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- rsingel 15y ago
  Thanks Paul. I didn't submit this to HN. But I'll disagree about the news value. The complaint's allegations about what Dropbox promised, versus how the architecture actually works, are pretty strong. Soghoian knows his tech and he knows the FTC (he used to work for them). I like Dropbox. I use Dropbox. But the blog post Dropbox keeps pointing to doesn't explain the discrepancy between what users were told about security/privacy and how the service works in practice (centralized encryption keys).
  - jdp23 15y ago
    I agree with Ryan -- this is exactly the kind of news I want to see on HN. For that matter, many other HN readers may also be interested in knowing the potential costs of making apparently-exaggerated security claims in today's environment.
armored 15y ago
Callas tweeted on April 19: “I deleted my Dropbox account. It turns out that they lied and don’t actually encrypt your files and will hand them over to anyone who asks.” That's actually a lie too. Dropbox does encrypt your files, it's just that, naturally, they hold the key. If I ask Dropbox for another users files, guess what? They don't hand them over. If your info is really that sensitive then for heavens sake don't outsource encryption and key management to a third party you have no supervision over. Encrypt your super sensitive files with Truecrypt and then share/sync them with Dropbox.
- MarketingMuppet 15y ago
  I don't consider it 'natural that any provider of supposedly secure storage would hold the account owners encryption key. It's not hard (as proven by SpiderOak and Wuala) to implement client side encryption. It does however make it impossible (hard) to cross-account deduplicate which makes storage costs higher for the operator. I think the issue here is that dropbox tried to position themselves as 'as secure as everyone else' while actually holding the encryption keys and deduplicating across accounts, something that is not true for their competition.
- cperciva 15y ago
  Dropbox does encrypt your files, it's just that, naturally, they hold the key. Even if dropbox's claim was technically correct, it was absolutely misleading. When you say "this data is encrypted" people assume that you mean "... in a way which adds security"; if the same people who have access to the encrypted data also have access to the decryption keys, you might as well be using ROT-13. If I ask Dropbox for another users files, guess what? They don't hand them over. Modulo the recently-fixed vulnerability which allowed you to download data if you knew some hashes, that is.
  - Dylan16807 15y ago
    I wouldn't call it a vulnerability. The only way it could be abused would be tricking someone with the file into calculating very specific hashes and giving them to you.
helwr 15y ago
Previous thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2439965 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2439965
songshine 15y ago
The guy who filed this complaint is quite the troublemaker: http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/1206/technology-chris-soghoian-federal-trade-commission-agent-provocateur.html http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/1206/technology-chris-sogh...
- andre3k1 15y ago
  This is the same guy who brought to light Facebook's recent smear campaign against Google. http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-05-13/facebooks-google-smear-campaign-burson-marsteller-wont-fire-pr-hacks/ http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-05-13/fa...
- ramanujan 15y ago
  It is always easier to destroy than create. Soghoian is into notoriety. He could have gone to them and said "hey, I think you can fix this by doing X, Y, and Z". If ignored, ok, then go public. He slags off PR guys, but his goal is PR for himself.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - jw_ 15y ago
    I think this is different from the usual situation where somebody finds a vulnerability and goes to the vendor to see if they'll patch it instead of immediately going public. He found that they were apparently deliberately misleading consumers about how they were handling their data, in a way that easily may have lead to users trusting them with data that they might not have if they'd been upfront about their key management. I think an FTC complaint is entirely justified. You're definitely correct about him being a PR seeker. I'm not too familiar with this fellow, so if he is slagging off PR people it would certainly be hypocritical, but so what? I think this guy is providing a valuable service by exposing misconduct by tech companies.
    - ramanujan 15y ago
      Well, "misconduct" and "deliberately misleading" are pretty strong charges for a technical matter. There's always a tradeoff between security and convenience. Soghoian's framing of the issue is completely sensationalistic, befitting of MSNBC or Fox News. I mean, reporting it to the FTC? The same FTC which fined Rock Star over the Hot Coffee mod? Which went after Viacom for Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction? Unfortunately, government officials are not philosopher kings capable of making fine discernments among encryption protocols.
staunch 15y ago
"President Obama Personally Executed Bin Laden, HN Comment to CIA Alleges." Seriously, who cares where the "complaint" was sent? Either it's a valid argument or it's not. Where it was sent should have no bearing. The argument that Dropbox did this to save money is transparently bogus too. That's in there to make it seem like the FTC has grounds for getting involved. Dropbox clearly chose to store keys themselves so they could offer core features like web/pubic sharing.
- mestudent 15y ago
  Don't forget password resets, that is one feature that is truly needed to appeal to the masses.
  - kevinpet 15y ago
    This is key. Dropbox needs to work as a backup solution, not just as a file sharing convenience solution, because that's how users will actually use it. This potential conversation doesn't sound good: Grandma: My computer crashed, I got a new one, but I've forgotten my dropbox password. Dropbox: Okay, can you go get the printout when you registered saying "print this out and never lose it"? Grandma: I didn't print that out / I lost it / the house burned down. Dropbox: Sorry, then you're screwed because we designed our service to be usable only by those who have a deep understanding of computer security.
    - Florin_Andrei 15y ago
      The whole story is blown out of proportion. You're putting your files online, and there's a Web interface to access them, and you expect them to be absolutely secure - really? Encrypt them with something really solid and don't put them online, if that's your concern. You upload your files to the cloud, and then you complain when the company hands them over to the FBI - really? Bury the files in concrete at midnight, and kill all witnesses, if that's your concern. The guy who is agitating the whole thing - I'm changing my mind about him. He did a good job with the whole Facebook / Google debacle, but now he's coming off as an attention seeker / karma whore.
tlrobinson 15y ago
I'm surprised Jon Callas hadn't realized Dropbox is able to decrypt your files. It always seemed obvious to me given several of Dropbox's advertised features necessitate it (in particular accessing your files over the web interface, and probably their sharing features). Most users wouldn't understand this, but the founder and CTO of PGP Corp should. That said, this article is incorrect on at least one point: de-duplication does not require Dropbox be able to decrypt your files. tzs came up with this clever scheme in a previous comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2461713 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2461713 Of course even if Dropbox didn't have the keys to decrypt your files you're still trusting them (or SpiderOak or Wuala or most of Dropbox's competitors) by running their proprietary software. But I suppose people are more concerned about subpoenas and compromised servers than malicious actions by Dropbox themselves.
- sigil 15y ago
  > Of course even if Dropbox didn't have the keys to decrypt your files you're still trusting them (or SpiderOak or Wuala or most of Dropbox's competitors) by running their proprietary software. You don't have to trust tarsnap. Block encryption happens client side using open source software.
  - moe 15y ago
    I wish tarsnap was in the same game as Dropbox, I'd pay for it. But as it stands Dropbox is an extremely convenient, general-purpose "network folder". And tarsnap is a backup-tool for unix admins.
    - ch0wn 15y ago
      I guess this wasn't meant as a feature comparison between both tools but as proof that it is possible to create fully transparent tools for sharing encrypted data across the internet.
      - parfe 15y ago
        I'm not sure why this gets brought up with Dropbox. Of course it's possible to provide a service which only receives and stores encrypted data. At that point Dropbox would cease to exist. Half the posts about dropbox are lauding it for doing one simple thing well. Your Dropbox/ folder is shared with no fuss. The other half of posts about dropbox are ribbing on it for not being secure enough. Here's a clue: If I had to carry an private key with me to decrypt data stored in dropbox i might as well just carry the data.
phlux 15y ago
OK, so I am a fan of dropbox and I use it across many machines, (better than those on Richess) -- and, as I understand the overall issue to be, the concern is that DropBox may at some point "hand over your files" to (I assume) The Feds -- should they come knocking? Now, I expect that for all intents and purposes the encryption/security employed by Dropbox is 'good-enough' that I dont have to worry about random-internet-user gaining access to my docs, yet I have absolutely NO illusions that ANY company will refuse to hand over my data to the feds should the feds be seeking it. Further, I would suggest that anyone with anything they dont want the feds to know about/get their mitts on not be stupid enough to store said sensitive secrets IN THE FUCKING CLOUD Additionally, I can understand that Drew may not be the most savvy in navigating such issues given him being a young CEO and all - and I can understand that he would want all the DropBoxians to feel comfortable with the safety and security of their data in his hands - but I would like to see a frank, real-world answer to any security claims which delineate in no-uncertain-terms exactly what level of data safety, security and encryption one may expect. Drew may even do well as to explicitly say "We shall not refuse to hand over any of your data (and its revision history) to the Feds should they come seeking it with legal merit." If, after such a statement people are concerned about their data going anywhere -- they should get off dropbox / implement truecrypt as stated. Finally, a question for Drew: given this craptastic event; would Drop Box be open to much more robust file encryption tools being developed as an addon to DropBox; e.g. a third party wrapper application that allows end-to-end encryption while still allowing the web UI etc to work? (If I misread the circumstances of the whole issue - forgive my little rant)
- Lazlo_Nibble 15y ago
  and, as I understand the overall issue to be, the concern is that DropBox may at some point "hand over your files" to (I assume) The Feds -- should they come knocking? No, the concern is that Dropbox led people to believe that by use of encryption, Dropbox was preventing user files from being accessible to anyone except that user, which isn't actually true, and that Dropbox gained unearned competitive advantage because of that untruth. Technically-savvy users who know (or more to the point, care) how Dropbox works behind the scenes may be able to figure out that user files had to be accessible to Dropbox (the "but how could they de-dupe files?" argument). Bully for them, but the fact that some people understand why an advertising claim is misleading doesn't make it okay for that claim to be misleading in the first place.
motters 15y ago
I've never been a Dropbox user, and this sort of behavior doesn't surprise me. It puzzles me why folks are prepared to spend substantial amounts of money renting tiny amounts of insecure web storage when they could spend a modest amount on a plug computer and have a large amount of fairly secure storage, and without the indefinite rental fees.
- jerrya 15y ago
  A year ago, I purchased a Seagate Dockstar (plug computer) and did just what you are saying. That Dockstar currently turns on and blinks amber. Seagate tells me it is dead. That and the puny bandwidth of my cable connection and the costs of backing up my diskdrives, leads to a desire to outsource that pain. So whether it is Dropbox, Google, Wuala, or many other solutions, I would like to find reasonably secure cloud storage, and I would be willing to pay for that (and I do.)
  - motters 15y ago
    Puny bandwidth is going to be a problem whether the server is your own or exists at some unspecified location in the cloud. Cloud storage isn't necessarily bad, but it's expensive considering the cost of storage these days and it might be a good idea to encrypt anything that you don't want to become public information before uploading it onto a cloud server.
    - jerrya 15y ago
      There is also the sense I have though, that what I am paying for is also: a) their raid on my files b) their electrons c) their sysops and their training and certification and their corporate deals with seagate, and netapp, and cisco, ... As I said, my dockstar died, I will replace it with a USB hub, but, it is a bit of a pain when what I would prefer to be doing is anything more interesting, fun, or profitable. Regarding puny bandwidth, I am not sure I understand your point. I get about 12M down and about 600K up, and my understanding is that is fairly typical for a home cable connection (in the US). But that 600K up limits my downloads anywhere else on the planet if my files are stored at my house and served by local server there. If I store the files in the cloud, I get Google's or Wuala's or Dropbox's bandwidth to my device.
MarketingMuppet 15y ago
The article alleges that SpiderOak (https://spideroak.com https://spideroak.com) does not deduct data. This is not however correct. SpiderOak deduplicates data but on an per account level and not cross-account since security prohibits this.
jabrams 15y ago
A lot of this does not make sense to me. Dropbox allows you to view your files via a web browser interface. Obviously that means they can access the unencrypted files. Perhaps people would prefer not to have the web access features. But even then, if Dropbox never stored the decryption keys on their servers anywhere, and the decryption key was stored only on a client PC, and I lost my computer, I would not be able to access the backed-up data from Dropbox on a new computer. That would kind of defeat the purpose of Dropbox for me. As many others have pointed out (including Lifehacker) you can always use Truecrypt to put some stuff in your Dropbox that no one but you can decrypt. As far as the "feds" getting my data, if they are after me, they can get a search warrant from a judge and come into my house and confiscate all of my computers, which would allow them to access any data on my harddrives not encrypted with Truecrypt...
RK 15y ago
Dropbox should just make a "Lockbox" folder feature that is fully encrypted. Many people happy (nice new feature), maybe fewer complaints.
hristov 15y ago
What really worries me about de-duping is what if it fucks up your files. What if one file just happens to have the same hash as another completely different file uploaded by a different person? Then all of a sudden, this really important contract that you think you have stored online and in the dropbox folders of your four different computers gets automatically deleted and replaced with a completely different file everywhere. And if you have set up automatic backups like a good boy, it may even be automatically replaced in all your backups before you figure out the problem. I know you will say that the hashes are long enough so this should not happen until dropbox has trillions of files, etc. But those calculations are all based on assumption of random data in the files. We all know that various computer files may have structured and patterned data. It is possible for the data in certain types of files to be structured in such a way as to produce a much narrower range of possible hashes than generally assumed. And with 25 million users and hundreds of millions of files, God knows what may happen.
- thurn 15y ago
  As long as they're using a reasonable hash, that probably won't be much of a concern any time soon. To give some context, a 256 bit key space is about enough to uniquely identify every atom in the known universe.
  - hristov 15y ago
    That is an impressive fact, but not really relevant IMO. There are many more possible files than particles in the universe. A hash does not uniquely identify a file from all other possible files. This follows from the definition of a hash function.
- Dylan16807 15y ago
  It's not going to happen unless an attack is discovered on the hash algorithm, and even they they'll need to know the hash of your file. And it's still not going to replace the version you have on your computer; only fresh downloads from dropbox will be wrong.
  - 15y ago
daniel1980fl2 15y ago
“has and continues to make deceptive statements to consumers regarding the extent to which it protects and encrypts therir data,” sounds like dropbox management are bunch of dirtbag scams!! glad I never used their services -- and never will. “Millions of people depend on our service every day and we work hard to keep their data safe, secure, and private.” LOL!! "dont be evil", anyone?? its like you run a business thanks to one promise, has plenty of users signed thanks to that promise, then when it came out the promise was lie, you try to defend yourself: hey! we got so many users and we work hard for them. LOL!
adamdecaf 15y ago
Item 37 has an error, it reads "In their April 21, 2001" which should be "In their April 21, 2011". Nothing big, just important for correctness.
mike-cardwell 15y ago
Dropbox must have actual figures on how much storage space they save by having de-duplication. Would be nice if they published them. Personally, every file in my Dropbox is unique... I wonder how many people use it for storing deduplicatable content like mp3s and videos etc.

251 points by schwanksta 15y ago

Gah. I just told our corporate counsel that it was ok to use Dropbox because everything was secured "even the app" and all the files were encrypted on Dropbox's site.

rdl 15y ago
It's all relative. The problem was somewhat (unintentionally?) misleading marketing and disclosure, not their actual architecture, at least for most uses of dropbox. Dropbox seems to have decent transport security, which is more than 99% of apps. Keeping files in dropbox might also keep unencrypted and out of date copies from persisting on local drives, random USB thumb drives, borrowed computers, computers at the print shop, etc. Yes, someone who compromises dropbox, or a rogue high-level dropbox employee, or a law enforcement officer with a warrant, could get access to your files on disk at dropbox. Dropbox is probably not the weak link, though. For a normal user (individual or corporate), trusting dropbox is not any worse than trusting gmail or anyone else who has your data and has market, legal, and other reasons to keep it safe for you. I've met with a bunch of top-tier attorneys in the past couple weeks, and none of them want to mess with PGP; they trust that if gmail or an outsourced exchange provider were snooping on their messages, there would be legal recourse; sure, it's an issue if there's no way to prove it, but generally they are pretty trusting of major service providers. I personally don't use dropbox for anything except "public" files, because I try to constrain long-term storage of my data to my own infrastructure, or something encrypted end to end and fully under my control. However, dropbox is probably a cut above the effective level of security most organizations or individuals have in practice. I'd sure prefer if dropbox did client-side encryption and never had access to the keys, but then you'd also need to trust that the dropbox binary doesn't secretly send your password to Russia, and that no future version of the dropbox binary that you use has the send-to-Russia feature added. And, you'd need to trust that none of the devices from which you access dropbox has been keyloggered, trojaned, etc. Of course, dropbox seems pretty robust in terms of availability; I just lost an SSD which didn't have timely backups of certain files, something which is going to ruin my weekend and which would have been avoided had I been less paranoid and used dropbox more. (and, I'm working on solving the issues with trusting remote services, actually...)
- mtogo 15y ago
  | Dropbox seems to have decent transport security Unless you're using the mobile app. | For a normal user (individual or corporate), trusting dropbox is not any worse than trusting gmail or anyone else who has your data and has market, legal, and other reasons to keep it safe for you. Except Google doesn't (afaik) lie about their ability to en/decrypt or view your personal data.
  - rdl 15y ago
    Yeah, both points are true. At least it looks like they are fixing the mobile app ssl thing. I think lying is a bit excessive as a description; they were misleading, hopefully unintentionally, on something where full and clear disclosure would have been a better standard. It isn't like Crypto AG or other famous vendor vs. users situations, though. Ascribing malice to them seems inappropriate.
armored 15y ago
Encrypt with Truecrypt, share with Dropbox. Problem solved.
- rdl 15y ago
  Except then you can't use those files on mobile devices or from the web UI, both of which are useful (my primary interest in dropbox, and the one thing I can't trivially accomplish on my own, is the iOS device support. The alternative is just to use Apple's iDisk, which has exactly the same risks as Dropbox, minus the cross-platform capabilities.)
  - armored 15y ago
    I'm not sure if it's helpful to you, but I use Keypass & Dropbox to sync some encrypted data to my Android phone. It's limited but useful for storing sensitive text. There is an iPhone app: http://ikeepass.de/ http://ikeepass.de/
    - rdl 15y ago
      I use 1password and wifi syncing. I asked them to add WebDAV support to store the bundle, which is how omnifocus does this, which is probably the most cloudiness I will accept for my password file.
- sigil 15y ago
  > Encrypt with Truecrypt, share with Dropbox. Problem solved. Not so fast. How big is the binary diff when you change a file within a Truecrypt volume? Ie, how much Dropbox bandwidth will you be using, even with a small change? I performed the following experiment. Start with a 250M Truecrypt volume. Mount it. Create a 1M file from /dev/random. Unmount the volume. Now, look at what blocks in the Truecrypt volume file have changed. Dropbox uses a 4M blocksize [1]. seq 0 63 | while read i; do { dd bs=4M skip=$i count=0; dd bs=4M count=1; } < truecrypt.bin.before | md5sum done 2>/dev/null | sort > md5s.before seq 0 63 | while read i; do { dd bs=4M skip=$i count=0; dd bs=4M count=1; } < truecrypt.bin.after | md5sum done 2>/dev/null | sort > md5s.after comm -13 md5s.before md5s.after | wc -l 8 Conclusion: in this case, Dropbox will transfer 32M (8x the normal 4M) because I added a 1M file to my Truecrypt volume. Note: I haven't tried adding bigger files, but suspect the number of blocks changed will go up linearly but steeply with the size of the added file. It's not actually that surprising that TrueCrypt mixes file changes throughout the volume file. Why bring this all up? Because something that does client side block encryption (tarsnap is an example) would only transfer the affected block. 4M, if that's the block size. And you don't have to trust the cloud storage provider at all. EDIT: My pipelines were wrong on the first go, suggesting a much larger number of differing blocks. Sorry about that. [1] http://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=17631 http://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=17631

huhtenberg 15y ago

Can anyone speculate as to what the ultimate goal of bringing this to FTC's attention is?

DenisM 15y ago
From the article: ...charges that Dropbox “has and continues to make deceptive statements to consumers regarding the extent to which it protects and encrypts therir data,” which amounts to a deceptive trade practice that can be investigated by the FTC.
tshtf 15y ago
Christopher Soghoian[1] filed the complaint. I would assume he was concerned with the deceptive practices of Dropbox? [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Soghoian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Soghoian
- kenjackson 15y ago
  This guy is one busy grad student. Didn't realize he got the Facebook story out too.
suking 15y ago
To waste $. Why aren't they going after the mortgage fraudsters and bankers? Dropbox is way more important than that right?
- codeup 15y ago
  If only they had people like Soghoian dealing with problems in other industries...
- jerrya 15y ago
  Fallacy of the excluded middle.

dhouston 15y ago

just so everyone knows, this complaint raises old issues that we addressed in our public blog post a few weeks ago: http://blog.dropbox.com/?p=735 http://blog.dropbox.com/?p=735

kenjackson 15y ago
People have asked why Dropbox servers need to decrypt user data. The reason is many of the most popular Dropbox features — like accessing your files from the website, creating file previews, and sharing files with other people — would either not be possible or would be much more cumbersome without this capability. Accessing files from the website and file previews can use a key that I give you when I login. The only one where you need to have a key is if I share the file with someone. Can't you throw up a prompt when I elect to share a file that says, "This file will now be accessible to person XYZ. In order to do this DropBox will re-encrypt with our own private key"? I suspect a lot of people don't share most/all of their files with anyone. It would be nice to have privacy by default and then opt-out when they decide to share it.
- runningdogx 15y ago
  That would prevent de-duplication in the non-shared case, which as I understand it is important to Dropbox for increasing storage efficiency. I suspect that is the primary reason why they don't have an option to "store encryption key locally only" in the client. The excuse that users expect to be able to share and access files on the web can be overcome with a big scary warning indicating that is not possible when using client-side-only encryption keys. Dropbox advocates TrueCrypt in one breath, but refuses to integrate client-only encryption keys in the client with the next breath. Obviously they know what we all know: TrueCrypt presents a poor UX for non-technical users, and so most people won't use it even if it's recommended. Then DropBox gets to be the hero for advocating TrueCrypt while they get de-dup efficiency because they know few people actually bother using TrueCrypt. Any transfer of keys to dropbox, even temporally, means your data on dropbox should be considered insecure. You have no way to know what's going on on the dropbox side. The same issue arises for CAs that let customers generate SSL keys within a web interface, to avoid the nuisance of having to generate a key/cert/csr themselves and uploading that. It doesn't matter if the CA promises never to store the private key. It's insecure and it's bad practice.

pg 15y ago

I feel like I should point out that this article isn't about the FTC doing something, but about a private individual filing a complaint with the FTC, which anyone can do. I like Ryan Singel. He was the first reporter to write about YC. So I can't really begrudge him the pageviews he knew he'd get from HN over this. But 'taint really news.

mestudent 15y ago
Can anyone explain to me how the article or even title of the article would make someone think the FTC was doing something and then require such a statement from pg? It is referenced in both as a complaint and is news for wired readers, not necessarily here (though the FTC complaint being filed here is new).
- schwanksta 15y ago
  That was my fault. I originally wrote the hed as "FTC Complaint: Dropbox Lied to Users about Data Security", which I thought would get around people reading just the "Dropbox Lied To Users" part. PG changed it to the hed from the article, I suppose to make sure nobody thought the complaint originated from the FTC.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
rsingel 15y ago
Thanks Paul. I didn't submit this to HN. But I'll disagree about the news value. The complaint's allegations about what Dropbox promised, versus how the architecture actually works, are pretty strong. Soghoian knows his tech and he knows the FTC (he used to work for them). I like Dropbox. I use Dropbox. But the blog post Dropbox keeps pointing to doesn't explain the discrepancy between what users were told about security/privacy and how the service works in practice (centralized encryption keys).
- jdp23 15y ago
  I agree with Ryan -- this is exactly the kind of news I want to see on HN. For that matter, many other HN readers may also be interested in knowing the potential costs of making apparently-exaggerated security claims in today's environment.

armored 15y ago

Callas tweeted on April 19: “I deleted my Dropbox account. It turns out that they lied and don’t actually encrypt your files and will hand them over to anyone who asks.” That's actually a lie too. Dropbox does encrypt your files, it's just that, naturally, they hold the key. If I ask Dropbox for another users files, guess what? They don't hand them over. If your info is really that sensitive then for heavens sake don't outsource encryption and key management to a third party you have no supervision over. Encrypt your super sensitive files with Truecrypt and then share/sync them with Dropbox.

MarketingMuppet 15y ago
I don't consider it 'natural that any provider of supposedly secure storage would hold the account owners encryption key. It's not hard (as proven by SpiderOak and Wuala) to implement client side encryption. It does however make it impossible (hard) to cross-account deduplicate which makes storage costs higher for the operator. I think the issue here is that dropbox tried to position themselves as 'as secure as everyone else' while actually holding the encryption keys and deduplicating across accounts, something that is not true for their competition.
cperciva 15y ago
Dropbox does encrypt your files, it's just that, naturally, they hold the key. Even if dropbox's claim was technically correct, it was absolutely misleading. When you say "this data is encrypted" people assume that you mean "... in a way which adds security"; if the same people who have access to the encrypted data also have access to the decryption keys, you might as well be using ROT-13. If I ask Dropbox for another users files, guess what? They don't hand them over. Modulo the recently-fixed vulnerability which allowed you to download data if you knew some hashes, that is.
- Dylan16807 15y ago
  I wouldn't call it a vulnerability. The only way it could be abused would be tricking someone with the file into calculating very specific hashes and giving them to you.

helwr 15y ago

Previous thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2439965 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2439965

songshine 15y ago

The guy who filed this complaint is quite the troublemaker: http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/1206/technology-chris-soghoian-federal-trade-commission-agent-provocateur.html http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/1206/technology-chris-sogh...

andre3k1 15y ago
This is the same guy who brought to light Facebook's recent smear campaign against Google. http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-05-13/facebooks-google-smear-campaign-burson-marsteller-wont-fire-pr-hacks/ http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-05-13/fa...
ramanujan 15y ago
It is always easier to destroy than create. Soghoian is into notoriety. He could have gone to them and said "hey, I think you can fix this by doing X, Y, and Z". If ignored, ok, then go public. He slags off PR guys, but his goal is PR for himself.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- jw_ 15y ago
  I think this is different from the usual situation where somebody finds a vulnerability and goes to the vendor to see if they'll patch it instead of immediately going public. He found that they were apparently deliberately misleading consumers about how they were handling their data, in a way that easily may have lead to users trusting them with data that they might not have if they'd been upfront about their key management. I think an FTC complaint is entirely justified. You're definitely correct about him being a PR seeker. I'm not too familiar with this fellow, so if he is slagging off PR people it would certainly be hypocritical, but so what? I think this guy is providing a valuable service by exposing misconduct by tech companies.
  - ramanujan 15y ago
    Well, "misconduct" and "deliberately misleading" are pretty strong charges for a technical matter. There's always a tradeoff between security and convenience. Soghoian's framing of the issue is completely sensationalistic, befitting of MSNBC or Fox News. I mean, reporting it to the FTC? The same FTC which fined Rock Star over the Hot Coffee mod? Which went after Viacom for Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction? Unfortunately, government officials are not philosopher kings capable of making fine discernments among encryption protocols.

staunch 15y ago

"President Obama Personally Executed Bin Laden, HN Comment to CIA Alleges." Seriously, who cares where the "complaint" was sent? Either it's a valid argument or it's not. Where it was sent should have no bearing. The argument that Dropbox did this to save money is transparently bogus too. That's in there to make it seem like the FTC has grounds for getting involved. Dropbox clearly chose to store keys themselves so they could offer core features like web/pubic sharing.

mestudent 15y ago
Don't forget password resets, that is one feature that is truly needed to appeal to the masses.
- kevinpet 15y ago
  This is key. Dropbox needs to work as a backup solution, not just as a file sharing convenience solution, because that's how users will actually use it. This potential conversation doesn't sound good: Grandma: My computer crashed, I got a new one, but I've forgotten my dropbox password. Dropbox: Okay, can you go get the printout when you registered saying "print this out and never lose it"? Grandma: I didn't print that out / I lost it / the house burned down. Dropbox: Sorry, then you're screwed because we designed our service to be usable only by those who have a deep understanding of computer security.
  - Florin_Andrei 15y ago
    The whole story is blown out of proportion. You're putting your files online, and there's a Web interface to access them, and you expect them to be absolutely secure - really? Encrypt them with something really solid and don't put them online, if that's your concern. You upload your files to the cloud, and then you complain when the company hands them over to the FBI - really? Bury the files in concrete at midnight, and kill all witnesses, if that's your concern. The guy who is agitating the whole thing - I'm changing my mind about him. He did a good job with the whole Facebook / Google debacle, but now he's coming off as an attention seeker / karma whore.

tlrobinson 15y ago

I'm surprised Jon Callas hadn't realized Dropbox is able to decrypt your files. It always seemed obvious to me given several of Dropbox's advertised features necessitate it (in particular accessing your files over the web interface, and probably their sharing features). Most users wouldn't understand this, but the founder and CTO of PGP Corp should. That said, this article is incorrect on at least one point: de-duplication does not require Dropbox be able to decrypt your files. tzs came up with this clever scheme in a previous comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2461713 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2461713 Of course even if Dropbox didn't have the keys to decrypt your files you're still trusting them (or SpiderOak or Wuala or most of Dropbox's competitors) by running their proprietary software. But I suppose people are more concerned about subpoenas and compromised servers than malicious actions by Dropbox themselves.

sigil 15y ago
> Of course even if Dropbox didn't have the keys to decrypt your files you're still trusting them (or SpiderOak or Wuala or most of Dropbox's competitors) by running their proprietary software. You don't have to trust tarsnap. Block encryption happens client side using open source software.
- moe 15y ago
  I wish tarsnap was in the same game as Dropbox, I'd pay for it. But as it stands Dropbox is an extremely convenient, general-purpose "network folder". And tarsnap is a backup-tool for unix admins.
  - ch0wn 15y ago
    I guess this wasn't meant as a feature comparison between both tools but as proof that it is possible to create fully transparent tools for sharing encrypted data across the internet.
    - parfe 15y ago
      I'm not sure why this gets brought up with Dropbox. Of course it's possible to provide a service which only receives and stores encrypted data. At that point Dropbox would cease to exist. Half the posts about dropbox are lauding it for doing one simple thing well. Your Dropbox/ folder is shared with no fuss. The other half of posts about dropbox are ribbing on it for not being secure enough. Here's a clue: If I had to carry an private key with me to decrypt data stored in dropbox i might as well just carry the data.

phlux 15y ago

OK, so I am a fan of dropbox and I use it across many machines, (better than those on Richess) -- and, as I understand the overall issue to be, the concern is that DropBox may at some point "hand over your files" to (I assume) The Feds -- should they come knocking? Now, I expect that for all intents and purposes the encryption/security employed by Dropbox is 'good-enough' that I dont have to worry about random-internet-user gaining access to my docs, yet I have absolutely NO illusions that ANY company will refuse to hand over my data to the feds should the feds be seeking it. Further, I would suggest that anyone with anything they dont want the feds to know about/get their mitts on not be stupid enough to store said sensitive secrets IN THE FUCKING CLOUD Additionally, I can understand that Drew may not be the most savvy in navigating such issues given him being a young CEO and all - and I can understand that he would want all the DropBoxians to feel comfortable with the safety and security of their data in his hands - but I would like to see a frank, real-world answer to any security claims which delineate in no-uncertain-terms exactly what level of data safety, security and encryption one may expect. Drew may even do well as to explicitly say "We shall not refuse to hand over any of your data (and its revision history) to the Feds should they come seeking it with legal merit." If, after such a statement people are concerned about their data going anywhere -- they should get off dropbox / implement truecrypt as stated. Finally, a question for Drew: given this craptastic event; would Drop Box be open to much more robust file encryption tools being developed as an addon to DropBox; e.g. a third party wrapper application that allows end-to-end encryption while still allowing the web UI etc to work? (If I misread the circumstances of the whole issue - forgive my little rant)

Lazlo_Nibble 15y ago
and, as I understand the overall issue to be, the concern is that DropBox may at some point "hand over your files" to (I assume) The Feds -- should they come knocking? No, the concern is that Dropbox led people to believe that by use of encryption, Dropbox was preventing user files from being accessible to anyone except that user, which isn't actually true, and that Dropbox gained unearned competitive advantage because of that untruth. Technically-savvy users who know (or more to the point, care) how Dropbox works behind the scenes may be able to figure out that user files had to be accessible to Dropbox (the "but how could they de-dupe files?" argument). Bully for them, but the fact that some people understand why an advertising claim is misleading doesn't make it okay for that claim to be misleading in the first place.

motters 15y ago

I've never been a Dropbox user, and this sort of behavior doesn't surprise me. It puzzles me why folks are prepared to spend substantial amounts of money renting tiny amounts of insecure web storage when they could spend a modest amount on a plug computer and have a large amount of fairly secure storage, and without the indefinite rental fees.

jerrya 15y ago
A year ago, I purchased a Seagate Dockstar (plug computer) and did just what you are saying. That Dockstar currently turns on and blinks amber. Seagate tells me it is dead. That and the puny bandwidth of my cable connection and the costs of backing up my diskdrives, leads to a desire to outsource that pain. So whether it is Dropbox, Google, Wuala, or many other solutions, I would like to find reasonably secure cloud storage, and I would be willing to pay for that (and I do.)
- motters 15y ago
  Puny bandwidth is going to be a problem whether the server is your own or exists at some unspecified location in the cloud. Cloud storage isn't necessarily bad, but it's expensive considering the cost of storage these days and it might be a good idea to encrypt anything that you don't want to become public information before uploading it onto a cloud server.
  - jerrya 15y ago
    There is also the sense I have though, that what I am paying for is also: a) their raid on my files b) their electrons c) their sysops and their training and certification and their corporate deals with seagate, and netapp, and cisco, ... As I said, my dockstar died, I will replace it with a USB hub, but, it is a bit of a pain when what I would prefer to be doing is anything more interesting, fun, or profitable. Regarding puny bandwidth, I am not sure I understand your point. I get about 12M down and about 600K up, and my understanding is that is fairly typical for a home cable connection (in the US). But that 600K up limits my downloads anywhere else on the planet if my files are stored at my house and served by local server there. If I store the files in the cloud, I get Google's or Wuala's or Dropbox's bandwidth to my device.

MarketingMuppet 15y ago

The article alleges that SpiderOak (https://spideroak.com https://spideroak.com) does not deduct data. This is not however correct. SpiderOak deduplicates data but on an per account level and not cross-account since security prohibits this.

jabrams 15y ago

A lot of this does not make sense to me. Dropbox allows you to view your files via a web browser interface. Obviously that means they can access the unencrypted files. Perhaps people would prefer not to have the web access features. But even then, if Dropbox never stored the decryption keys on their servers anywhere, and the decryption key was stored only on a client PC, and I lost my computer, I would not be able to access the backed-up data from Dropbox on a new computer. That would kind of defeat the purpose of Dropbox for me. As many others have pointed out (including Lifehacker) you can always use Truecrypt to put some stuff in your Dropbox that no one but you can decrypt. As far as the "feds" getting my data, if they are after me, they can get a search warrant from a judge and come into my house and confiscate all of my computers, which would allow them to access any data on my harddrives not encrypted with Truecrypt...

RK 15y ago

Dropbox should just make a "Lockbox" folder feature that is fully encrypted. Many people happy (nice new feature), maybe fewer complaints.

hristov 15y ago

What really worries me about de-duping is what if it fucks up your files. What if one file just happens to have the same hash as another completely different file uploaded by a different person? Then all of a sudden, this really important contract that you think you have stored online and in the dropbox folders of your four different computers gets automatically deleted and replaced with a completely different file everywhere. And if you have set up automatic backups like a good boy, it may even be automatically replaced in all your backups before you figure out the problem. I know you will say that the hashes are long enough so this should not happen until dropbox has trillions of files, etc. But those calculations are all based on assumption of random data in the files. We all know that various computer files may have structured and patterned data. It is possible for the data in certain types of files to be structured in such a way as to produce a much narrower range of possible hashes than generally assumed. And with 25 million users and hundreds of millions of files, God knows what may happen.

thurn 15y ago
As long as they're using a reasonable hash, that probably won't be much of a concern any time soon. To give some context, a 256 bit key space is about enough to uniquely identify every atom in the known universe.
- hristov 15y ago
  That is an impressive fact, but not really relevant IMO. There are many more possible files than particles in the universe. A hash does not uniquely identify a file from all other possible files. This follows from the definition of a hash function.
Dylan16807 15y ago
It's not going to happen unless an attack is discovered on the hash algorithm, and even they they'll need to know the hash of your file. And it's still not going to replace the version you have on your computer; only fresh downloads from dropbox will be wrong.
- 15y ago

daniel1980fl2 15y ago

“has and continues to make deceptive statements to consumers regarding the extent to which it protects and encrypts therir data,” sounds like dropbox management are bunch of dirtbag scams!! glad I never used their services -- and never will. “Millions of people depend on our service every day and we work hard to keep their data safe, secure, and private.” LOL!! "dont be evil", anyone?? its like you run a business thanks to one promise, has plenty of users signed thanks to that promise, then when it came out the promise was lie, you try to defend yourself: hey! we got so many users and we work hard for them. LOL!

adamdecaf 15y ago

Item 37 has an error, it reads "In their April 21, 2001" which should be "In their April 21, 2011". Nothing big, just important for correctness.

mike-cardwell 15y ago

Dropbox must have actual figures on how much storage space they save by having de-duplication. Would be nice if they published them. Personally, every file in my Dropbox is unique... I wonder how many people use it for storing deduplicatable content like mp3s and videos etc.