3 ms·

I disagree - the service provider should be considered an adversary and their service - and your tooling - should make it possible to obfuscate every single bit

by rsync 4y ago

I disagree - the service provider should be considered an adversary and their service - and your tooling - should make it possible to obfuscate every single bit of data and metadata that you store there. If only such a service existed. If only …

cbm-vic-20 4y ago
I've used such a service for at least a decade. End-to-end encrypted. All open source. ;)
- rsync 4y ago
  ... username checks out - our target demographic :)
  - AnonC 4y ago
    Off topic. Could you please update your website as promised (about three months ago) [1] on the pricing comparison and clarity for rsync.net? [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32768182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32768182
    - rsync 4y ago
      Working on it. It's complicated ... However, as with all things here, you can just email and discuss with a real person and we'll set you up the way you need to be set up wrt billing and pricing, etc.
nonameiguess 4y ago
I don't get it. If you don't trust Apple, then you don't take photos with an iPhone. There is no possible service they could offer that assures you every bit of data and metadata is obfuscated end to end in any sense of before Apple software has a chance to see it. At bare minimum, the camera app has to put together a file before there is anything to encrypt. A malicious Apple could just keep a second copy of that file, and even if you used a different backup service, they'd still have it.
xoa 4y ago
rsync.net is great and I've always appreciated the exposed ZFS capability, even if at this point 3x the cost per gb for a small scale users vs B2 is a lot more painful. Having encryption, including for transfers, also be part of the filesystem (which is open source) is great. Pity but for a small turn of history ZFS didn't become the native FS for Apple. And I think backups in particular is one of the focused completely unambiguous areas where Apple really has behaved in textbook anticompetitive fashion, and they should be required to allow people to point their iOS devices at any 3rd party service (including their own!) they wish that implements the right API (which Apple should have to document and follow themselves). Still with all that said: >I disagree - the service provider should be considered an adversary and their service - and your tooling - should make it possible to obfuscate every single bit of data and metadata that you store there. If you're using Apple devices at this point then I think they do unavoidably form some part of your core trust foundation. With current hardware Apple is everywhere in the stack right down to the CPU level, heck arguably below that since they have a special license with ARM and can implement their own custom extensions. If you really think they're an adversary to the point of doing custom backdoors explicitly going after you, then the hardware just can't be trusted. It's not unreasonable though to look at both Apple's incentives and the state of American law at least and see distinctions between Apple being compelled (or hacked) to provide something they have passive access to on their side anyway vs being compelled to engage in non-consensual active work and feature development (or having that slipped in and make it into general deployment) on things that necessarily must go out to end user devices. The former is both bog standard warrant/subpoena territory and not inherently detectable outside of Apple and the government, since it doesn't directly involve the user as a party at all. The latter is very arguably illegal and provokes far more public response, and involves deploying in ways that make it far harder to keep concealed (and open up other avenues of challenge).
tshaddox 4y ago
I think that's a separate issue. I'm not saying that Apple or any other service provider should not be considered a potential adversary. I'm saying it's still a good thing for service providers to implement solutions to threats.

by rsync 4y ago

cbm-vic-20 4y ago

I've used such a service for at least a decade. End-to-end encrypted. All open source. ;)

rsync 4y ago
... username checks out - our target demographic :)
- AnonC 4y ago
  Off topic. Could you please update your website as promised (about three months ago) [1] on the pricing comparison and clarity for rsync.net? [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32768182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32768182
  - rsync 4y ago
    Working on it. It's complicated ... However, as with all things here, you can just email and discuss with a real person and we'll set you up the way you need to be set up wrt billing and pricing, etc.

nonameiguess 4y ago

I don't get it. If you don't trust Apple, then you don't take photos with an iPhone. There is no possible service they could offer that assures you every bit of data and metadata is obfuscated end to end in any sense of before Apple software has a chance to see it. At bare minimum, the camera app has to put together a file before there is anything to encrypt. A malicious Apple could just keep a second copy of that file, and even if you used a different backup service, they'd still have it.

xoa 4y ago

rsync.net is great and I've always appreciated the exposed ZFS capability, even if at this point 3x the cost per gb for a small scale users vs B2 is a lot more painful. Having encryption, including for transfers, also be part of the filesystem (which is open source) is great. Pity but for a small turn of history ZFS didn't become the native FS for Apple. And I think backups in particular is one of the focused completely unambiguous areas where Apple really has behaved in textbook anticompetitive fashion, and they should be required to allow people to point their iOS devices at any 3rd party service (including their own!) they wish that implements the right API (which Apple should have to document and follow themselves). Still with all that said: >I disagree - the service provider should be considered an adversary and their service - and your tooling - should make it possible to obfuscate every single bit of data and metadata that you store there. If you're using Apple devices at this point then I think they do unavoidably form some part of your core trust foundation. With current hardware Apple is everywhere in the stack right down to the CPU level, heck arguably below that since they have a special license with ARM and can implement their own custom extensions. If you really think they're an adversary to the point of doing custom backdoors explicitly going after you, then the hardware just can't be trusted. It's not unreasonable though to look at both Apple's incentives and the state of American law at least and see distinctions between Apple being compelled (or hacked) to provide something they have passive access to on their side anyway vs being compelled to engage in non-consensual active work and feature development (or having that slipped in and make it into general deployment) on things that necessarily must go out to end user devices. The former is both bog standard warrant/subpoena territory and not inherently detectable outside of Apple and the government, since it doesn't directly involve the user as a party at all. The latter is very arguably illegal and provokes far more public response, and involves deploying in ways that make it far harder to keep concealed (and open up other avenues of challenge).

tshaddox 4y ago

I think that's a separate issue. I'm not saying that Apple or any other service provider should not be considered a potential adversary. I'm saying it's still a good thing for service providers to implement solutions to threats.