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I looked at BTSync the other day when researching self-hosted Dropbox alternatives. It looks like a great product and so far beats the pants off the closest co

by acabal 13y ago

I looked at BTSync the other day when researching self-hosted Dropbox alternatives. It looks like a great product and so far beats the pants off the closest competitor, Seafile, for ease of install and use. I was really impressed. But unfortunately it's not open source, so it comes down to an issue of trust--which, in the end, is the same issue with Dropbox and really the entire point of moving to self-hosted for me. Do you trust BitTorrent to properly encrypt your data as they promise? To not send it to someone else on the sly? Etc. etc. I acknowledge the possibility of funny business is remote at best but it's one of those "on principle" things for me. (Yes you could use another layer like Encfs or something before putting it in your BTSync/Dropbox folder but that's a pain and not really the point.)

ch0wn 13y ago
I fully agree with that. Trusting crypto in a closed-source product is something I'm not comfortable with. That said, I'm using btsync just for syncing unimportant files across clients within my local network and it's working really great.
SirDinosaur 13y ago
have you seen http://git-annex.branchable.com/assistant/ http://git-annex.branchable.com/assistant/?
objectivefs 13y ago
Would accessing your files using a shared POSIX compatible filesystem that's stored in your own S3 bucket be a possible alternative to self-hosting? With everything encrypted using the NaCl crypto library and stored directly on Amazon S3 with no middleman? I wanted exactly that and built ObjectiveFS. You can try the free preview at https://objectivefs.com https://objectivefs.com
- escaped_hn 13y ago
  The main issue he had with BitSYnc was it wasn't open source and you suggest to him not only a closed source alternative but proprietary as well.
SiVal 13y ago
How hard would an open source equivalent of BTSync be to create? This isn't advocacy; it's just a literal question. In a world where everyone uses multiple devices to access his or her "stuff", it seems as though something as fundamental as secure file sync'ing is going to become fundamental infrastructure in which an open source solution would be strongly preferred. How likely it is to happen soon would depend on how hard it is to do.
johne20 13y ago
Did you ever evaluate http://owncloud.org/ http://owncloud.org/ ? I have never used it, but looked at briefly awhile back and it is open source.
- da_n 13y ago
  From almost everyone I've heard that's tried it it's unfortunately extremely buggy.
  - ekianjo 13y ago
    Same here, did not hear very good things about it.
  - johne20 13y ago
    Good to know, thx.
- fakeer 13y ago
  Tooo hard to set-up, once you set it up it's a pain to use it and then it's a lot bigger pain to keep it running.
- yowmamasita 13y ago
  the linux server is implemented in java, which is pretty heavy for my 512mb ram box
rogerbinns 13y ago
> Do you trust BitTorrent ... Note how the company knows how much was synced as reported in the article, although it is unclear exactly what was measured (original file sizes, data transferred, tracker statistics etc). With true privacy the BitTorrent company would have no clue what actually happened.
bigiain 13y ago
"Do you trust BitTorrent to properly encrypt your data as they promise? To not send it to someone else on the sly?" I've currently got BTSync dealing with a bunch of "non-private" data, and EncFS (and BoxCryptor on OS X) encrypting the more private data I'm syncing with BTSync. I'm still "trusting" the BTSync app not to mess with my machine(s) in unexpected ways - but I have to trust every application I run to do that, Photoshop or Firefox are just as capable of "sending my data so someone else on the sly". One thing I'm realy liking about the BTSync/EncFS setup is that I can have machines I consider "less trustworthy" to sync/store EncFS encrypted data without having EncFS/BoxCryptor installed or needing the keys. I'm happy enough for a spare machine at work, where other people might have physical access to it, to store EncFS encrypted blobs for me. I'm confident enough that's secured against pretty much everything up to federal law enforcement or nation state level snooping.
- petsos 13y ago
  If you are going to trust BoxCryptor you can as well trust BTSync directly.
  - tlrobinson 13y ago
    You could argue that trusting two different entities for encryption and storage is safer than trusting a single entity for both. Two unrelated parties are "unlikely to collude" against you. Of course I'd rather not have to trust either, especially with encryption. Is there an open source equivalent to BoxCryptor?
    - bigiain 13y ago
      BoxCryptor interacts just fine with EncFS on Linux (I don't know if its a reimplementation or just a nice Mac OS X gui wrapper round the EncFS code), and EncFS is GPL. Note that EncFS "leaks" quite a bit of metadata - you might have problems explaining yourself if you've got files called blockbuster-movie.mpg or kiddie-porn.jpg - in certain configurations those filenames will be exposed (I think BoxCryptor always exposes filenames/directory-structure in the free version).
- 13y ago

by acabal 13y ago

ch0wn 13y ago

I fully agree with that. Trusting crypto in a closed-source product is something I'm not comfortable with. That said, I'm using btsync just for syncing unimportant files across clients within my local network and it's working really great.

SirDinosaur 13y ago

have you seen http://git-annex.branchable.com/assistant/ http://git-annex.branchable.com/assistant/?

objectivefs 13y ago

Would accessing your files using a shared POSIX compatible filesystem that's stored in your own S3 bucket be a possible alternative to self-hosting? With everything encrypted using the NaCl crypto library and stored directly on Amazon S3 with no middleman? I wanted exactly that and built ObjectiveFS. You can try the free preview at https://objectivefs.com https://objectivefs.com

escaped_hn 13y ago
The main issue he had with BitSYnc was it wasn't open source and you suggest to him not only a closed source alternative but proprietary as well.

SiVal 13y ago

How hard would an open source equivalent of BTSync be to create? This isn't advocacy; it's just a literal question. In a world where everyone uses multiple devices to access his or her "stuff", it seems as though something as fundamental as secure file sync'ing is going to become fundamental infrastructure in which an open source solution would be strongly preferred. How likely it is to happen soon would depend on how hard it is to do.

johne20 13y ago

Did you ever evaluate http://owncloud.org/ http://owncloud.org/ ? I have never used it, but looked at briefly awhile back and it is open source.

da_n 13y ago
From almost everyone I've heard that's tried it it's unfortunately extremely buggy.
- ekianjo 13y ago
  Same here, did not hear very good things about it.
- johne20 13y ago
  Good to know, thx.
fakeer 13y ago
Tooo hard to set-up, once you set it up it's a pain to use it and then it's a lot bigger pain to keep it running.
yowmamasita 13y ago
the linux server is implemented in java, which is pretty heavy for my 512mb ram box

rogerbinns 13y ago

> Do you trust BitTorrent ... Note how the company knows how much was synced as reported in the article, although it is unclear exactly what was measured (original file sizes, data transferred, tracker statistics etc). With true privacy the BitTorrent company would have no clue what actually happened.

bigiain 13y ago

"Do you trust BitTorrent to properly encrypt your data as they promise? To not send it to someone else on the sly?" I've currently got BTSync dealing with a bunch of "non-private" data, and EncFS (and BoxCryptor on OS X) encrypting the more private data I'm syncing with BTSync. I'm still "trusting" the BTSync app not to mess with my machine(s) in unexpected ways - but I have to trust every application I run to do that, Photoshop or Firefox are just as capable of "sending my data so someone else on the sly". One thing I'm realy liking about the BTSync/EncFS setup is that I can have machines I consider "less trustworthy" to sync/store EncFS encrypted data without having EncFS/BoxCryptor installed or needing the keys. I'm happy enough for a spare machine at work, where other people might have physical access to it, to store EncFS encrypted blobs for me. I'm confident enough that's secured against pretty much everything up to federal law enforcement or nation state level snooping.

petsos 13y ago
If you are going to trust BoxCryptor you can as well trust BTSync directly.
- tlrobinson 13y ago
  You could argue that trusting two different entities for encryption and storage is safer than trusting a single entity for both. Two unrelated parties are "unlikely to collude" against you. Of course I'd rather not have to trust either, especially with encryption. Is there an open source equivalent to BoxCryptor?
  - bigiain 13y ago
    BoxCryptor interacts just fine with EncFS on Linux (I don't know if its a reimplementation or just a nice Mac OS X gui wrapper round the EncFS code), and EncFS is GPL. Note that EncFS "leaks" quite a bit of metadata - you might have problems explaining yourself if you've got files called blockbuster-movie.mpg or kiddie-porn.jpg - in certain configurations those filenames will be exposed (I think BoxCryptor always exposes filenames/directory-structure in the free version).
13y ago