3 ms·

All these issues can be fixed in a completely transparent way for the end user. And they should be. That said, I think many of us have been missing the point w

by muyuu 14y ago

All these issues can be fixed in a completely transparent way for the end user. And they should be. That said, I think many of us have been missing the point with this site. The cryptography they provide allows for plausible deniability. No more, no less. They are perfectly able to view the contents of your uploads, and they never denied that. If you want truly private and secure files, then encrypt them yourself prior to uploading them. The scope of this particular flaw (which, again, can be fixed transparently) is that you don't only need to trust Mega, you need to trust their CDNs as well. Neither of these levels of trust is enough if you truly are concerned about the privacy of your files. It can only be considered a flaw in the first place because Mega claims to be the only party you need to trust and attempted to provide a means to ensure that. It just so happens that version 0 of this implementation does not work. Then, fail0verflow goes ahead and say that since they have made this mistake they don't understand cryptography and should not be trusted to store your stuff. I'm sorry but that's bollocks. This system is big enough so absolutely anyone can make a stupid mistake or 2. Cryptography is just one element. A red herring IMO, being completely honest. If you are storing sensitive data don't let them do all the work and encrypt it yourself. Or just don't upload it to the cloud at all. Absolutely everybody makes stupid mistakes and a single stupid mistake does not prove anything. I'd ask them to come down from their high horse because breaking a system is a lot less work than creating one. Especially when working under tight deadlines.

DanBC 14y ago
Mega said that their system ensures privacy for your files. It doesn't. Their product has two selling points. i) 50 GB ii) encryption Without encryption they're going to be under very heavy disruptive scrutiny. This seems to be a product breaking flaw.
- muyuu 14y ago
  They don't say exactly that. They claim to be able to read your files. The difference between their claims and the actual system after this flaw is this: CDNs can also potentially read your files if they are malicious and actively try (which would be a breach of their contract I assume). Doesn't change a thing for me to be honest. I don't trust Mega and all their employees, or whoever breaks into their facilities, to have my bank accounts logins and passwords in plain text. I trust them to keep my kindle purchased books with me not being liable of being "broadcasting them" as they are reasonably protecting them. Obviously it's a flaw and they should fix it. But it's not a doom and gloom, "their whole system is a farce" kind of flaw.
  - DanBC 14y ago
    > They don't say exactly that. In big red capitals on their front page they say "THE PRIVACY COMPANY". I couldn't find anything in the 46 point TOS that said explicitly that they can read your files. On their about page they say "Unlike most of our competitors, we use a state of the art browser based encryption technology where you, not us, control the keys." - that doesn't make it sound like they're telling you they can access your files. On their "The Privacy Company" page they quote from the universal declaration of human rights,and they say "All files stored on MEGA are encrypted. All data transfers from and to MEGA are encrypted. And while most cloud storage providers can and do claim the same, MEGA is different – unlike the industry norm where the cloud storage provider holds the decryption key, with MEGA, you control the encryption, you hold the keys, and you decide who you grant or deny access to your files, without requiring any risky software installs. It’s all happening in your web browser!" - that doesn't sound like they're telling you that they can read your files. On their help centre page they say "Because the server can't see filenames, filename collisions have to be dealt with on the client side. With standard settings, if you upload a file that you already seem to have in your account (same target path/filename, same size, same last modification time), it is skipped, but nothing prevents you from keeping multiple files or folders with the same name in the same folder." - which doesn't sound like they're saying they can read your files. They also say "Because our end-to-end encryption model inherently precludes any server-side manipulation of your data, which would be required to implement such a feature." - which also doesn't sound like they're saying they can read your data. But now we find out that not only can they read your files but a CDN could read your files. Since we know that companies must comply with correctly formed legal requests anything that extends the number of companies that can read the files increases the number of companies that can be leaned on by well funded groups. > Obviously it's a flaw and they should fix it. But it's not a doom and gloom, "their whole system is a farce" kind of flaw. Their whole system is cloud storage with encryption - without encryption it's just cloud storage and there's a bunch of other people offering that. Those other providers have the advantage of not having been previously raided by paramilitary police from an aggressive government. Crypto is hard. It's easy to go wrong. I have no idea what kind of research they did before launching, but to have broken crypto a few days after launch is not a good sign.
Aissen 14y ago
Exactly. It's much easier to update the javascript code that does the checks to use sha256 hashes than it is to update the bootloader/bootrom of the Nintendo Wii.

by muyuu 14y ago

DanBC 14y ago

Mega said that their system ensures privacy for your files. It doesn't. Their product has two selling points. i) 50 GB ii) encryption Without encryption they're going to be under very heavy disruptive scrutiny. This seems to be a product breaking flaw.

muyuu 14y ago
They don't say exactly that. They claim to be able to read your files. The difference between their claims and the actual system after this flaw is this: CDNs can also potentially read your files if they are malicious and actively try (which would be a breach of their contract I assume). Doesn't change a thing for me to be honest. I don't trust Mega and all their employees, or whoever breaks into their facilities, to have my bank accounts logins and passwords in plain text. I trust them to keep my kindle purchased books with me not being liable of being "broadcasting them" as they are reasonably protecting them. Obviously it's a flaw and they should fix it. But it's not a doom and gloom, "their whole system is a farce" kind of flaw.
- DanBC 14y ago
  > They don't say exactly that. In big red capitals on their front page they say "THE PRIVACY COMPANY". I couldn't find anything in the 46 point TOS that said explicitly that they can read your files. On their about page they say "Unlike most of our competitors, we use a state of the art browser based encryption technology where you, not us, control the keys." - that doesn't make it sound like they're telling you they can access your files. On their "The Privacy Company" page they quote from the universal declaration of human rights,and they say "All files stored on MEGA are encrypted. All data transfers from and to MEGA are encrypted. And while most cloud storage providers can and do claim the same, MEGA is different – unlike the industry norm where the cloud storage provider holds the decryption key, with MEGA, you control the encryption, you hold the keys, and you decide who you grant or deny access to your files, without requiring any risky software installs. It’s all happening in your web browser!" - that doesn't sound like they're telling you that they can read your files. On their help centre page they say "Because the server can't see filenames, filename collisions have to be dealt with on the client side. With standard settings, if you upload a file that you already seem to have in your account (same target path/filename, same size, same last modification time), it is skipped, but nothing prevents you from keeping multiple files or folders with the same name in the same folder." - which doesn't sound like they're saying they can read your files. They also say "Because our end-to-end encryption model inherently precludes any server-side manipulation of your data, which would be required to implement such a feature." - which also doesn't sound like they're saying they can read your data. But now we find out that not only can they read your files but a CDN could read your files. Since we know that companies must comply with correctly formed legal requests anything that extends the number of companies that can read the files increases the number of companies that can be leaned on by well funded groups. > Obviously it's a flaw and they should fix it. But it's not a doom and gloom, "their whole system is a farce" kind of flaw. Their whole system is cloud storage with encryption - without encryption it's just cloud storage and there's a bunch of other people offering that. Those other providers have the advantage of not having been previously raided by paramilitary police from an aggressive government. Crypto is hard. It's easy to go wrong. I have no idea what kind of research they did before launching, but to have broken crypto a few days after launch is not a good sign.

Aissen 14y ago

Exactly. It's much easier to update the javascript code that does the checks to use sha256 hashes than it is to update the bootloader/bootrom of the Nintendo Wii.