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Nobody stops people to use a stackable encrypted filesystem such as EncFS or eCryptfs over Dropbox. This "cloud security snafu" thing is getting old.
by 1SaltwaterC 14y ago
Nobody stops people to use a stackable encrypted filesystem such as EncFS or eCryptfs over Dropbox. This "cloud security snafu" thing is getting old.
- rsobers 14y agoYes, but out of 25,000,000 users, how many of them know what encryption is, nevermind EncFS? The important point is that it's generally a good idea to treat anything you don't control as nearly public.
- lvh 14y agoHow many of those users care or need to know what encryption is? The argument appears to be that users treat Dropbox like a private store when it isn't, and somehow that's Dropbox' fault.
- 1SaltwaterC 14y agoTheir privacy policy contains some interesting stuff about your actual privacy: "Compliance with Laws and Law Enforcement Requests; Protection of Dropbox's Rights". Also, the "Security Overview" page explains that the files are encrypted by themselves after they are uploaded, plus the fact that they manage the encryption keys. Combine that with the previous statement. Dropbox is responsible for what they say. It isn't responsible for what the user understands, or the fact that people don't properly read/understand ToS'es. People that care about their privacy, take measures.
- huggyface 14y agoNobody stops people to use a stackable encrypted filesystem such as EncFS or eCryptfs over Dropbox. I have never tried, and don't know, but does Dropbox deal elegantly with encrypted filesystems? If I have a 1GB encrypted volume sitting in my dropbox folder, and I save a change to a 1KB text doc in it, what does dropbox transmit? My suspicion is that they transmit the entire 1GB file (falling ever behind each time I do a save in it). They don't do low level file hooks, to my knowledge, and there's no way they're doing large scale binary diff'ing.
- qznc 14y agoEncfs encrypts each file on its own. It also encrypts the name. So if you edit your 1KB "passwords.txt" file, Dropbox sees an updated 1KB "mOvTBivPznAWPrQSuflgVXFJ" file.
- huggyface 14y agoAhh okay that makes sense. Very nice then. I was thinking more of the Truecrypt variety, but Encfs sounds ideal (albeit not really a file system).
- patdennis 14y agoI use truecrypt in Dropbox. If you make a small change to anything in a (potentially large) truecrypt volume, it has to re-sync the whole volume.
- 1SaltwaterC 14y agoThe issue with TC is the fact that it doesn't resync the volume while it's mounted.