Linkbait. Dropbox has already said they'll "cooperate with United States law enforcement when it receives valid legal process..." That's nothing new.
Dropbox Reader doesn't allow you to read other people's accounts. You can only view an account's details (read: not the file contents) if you already have access to the computer. If LE snatches your computer and the hard drive is encrypted with a good password and algo, LE can't do anything.
I'm not much of a security guru, but this seems like it lacks data and instead uses scare tactics to attack Dropbox. From the looks of it, DB isn't letting anyone do anything - it's only if you give up local access.
Linkbait and false. The new tool lets anyone look at the contents of the dropbox metainformation ON THE LOCAL COMPUTER. In other words, they can programmatically access information about files already on the computer.
As for cooperating with law enforcement, that's more or less part of how warrants work. It would be illegal to say "no" to a warrant.
Well, if you actually encrypted data in a form that only the user could decrypt before uploading it to the server, you could simply hand that over to law enforcement in good faith and they wouldn't be able to do anything. I am a Dropbox user but I never put sensitive data on it without encrypting it.
edit: Really? Downvoted for stating an obvious fact? I mean sure, Dropbox is great, but throwing your hands up and saying "that's ... how warrants work" is disingenuous when there are perfectly legal and workable ways around that. Sure, the UX might not be quite as good, but UX compromises are often made for security's sake. (See Firefox Sync's setup for example.)
It would be cool if DropBox exposed some sort of file stream API that would let you manipulate file data as it's sent to the server. This could be used for encryption and possibly other activities as well (automatic downsampling of MP3s to save space on your DropBox, or just generic compression on the file stream; conversion of certain OS-specific file formats to something more genericly readable if you have a multi-OS environment using the same DropBox).
Agreed. I AES-encrypt information that's actually private on my Dropbox. But Dropbox is providing a service grounded in simplicity. Sorry, that's the product angle. And exchanging this key without Dropbox intermediating would be much more complex than what Dropbox does now.
Also, the web interface, sharing, public folders, perhaps iPhone and Android apps (you have the question of how to get the key TO the device), would not be possible with such a system, at least not anything approaching usability.
And the added complexity is not beneficial for the average case. For the exceptions, Dropbox works great with TrueCrypt or OpenSSL or GPG or whatnot encryption.
> Agreed. I AES-encrypt information that's actually private on my Dropbox. But Dropbox is providing a service grounded in simplicity. Sorry, that's the product angle. And exchanging this key without Dropbox intermediating would be much more complex than what Dropbox does now.
A bit more complex, but not much more complex. See Firefox Sync's setup screen for a great execution of strong secret shared over weak password. We've known about EKE for close to 20 years.
> Also, the web interface
Yes, agreed. I'm not convinced it's worth it though.
> sharing, public folders
Yeah, these are a little more complicated. I wonder if some sort of shared secret system could work out here.
> perhaps iPhone and Android apps (you have the question of how to get the key TO the device)
Wouldn't EKE require the other computer you're syncing to to be online? I'm not a security guy, but seems like the best encryption you could do with just a password is a password-based encryption scheme, which isn't that great security-wise, not sure if the benefits are worth it.
My desktop is down right now (power supply burned out, ouch) so I think I actually use the web interface more than Dropbox itself, since I only have one computer... And encryption in Javascript is a pain, since you open yourself to man-in-the-middle attacks and such.
I don't know about shared secrets for sharing and such, but I haven't heard of anything even applicable beyond a few academic papers. Beyond, you know, using a different key for every file and then you can email the key to share it. But that doesn't let you revoke access from one person (I've seen papers on how to do that though) and that's also a waste of entropy. I think this is actually a nice area for research (well, maybe it's being done and I'm not aware; again, not a security guy).
Personally, I don't trust closed-source systems with my encryption code, client-side or server-side or not. I'm ok with Firefox Sync, I'm sure someone would notice if it had side channel leaks, but if you want Dropbox to ask for the encryption key, how do you know what it does?
Anyway, I think we're just entering the era where we understand encryption in consumer products.
> Wouldn't EKE require the other computer you're syncing to to be online?
It would, yes. With Firefox Sync you have two choices, either exchange keys or type in the key. I carry the key around in my wallet, so I don't think that's a big deal.
> And encryption in Javascript is a pain, since you open yourself to man-in-the-middle attacks and such.
SSL helps a lot here. I think uTorrent 3's remote web-accessible UI stuff does something like this, actually. edit: yeah, it generates a key on the client so the server never has access and uses SRP [1] to authenticate and exchange the key [2].
I'm sorry you've been downvoted, but I actually upvoted you (for seeming to have a grasp of what you were talking about and adding to the conversation).
Those aren't warrants. Presumably you comply with those, too, so please stop using the "W-word". Those are signed by judges, you are necessarily under US law complying with the ones that aren't, too.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 39.5 ms ] threadDropbox Reader doesn't allow you to read other people's accounts. You can only view an account's details (read: not the file contents) if you already have access to the computer. If LE snatches your computer and the hard drive is encrypted with a good password and algo, LE can't do anything.
I'm not much of a security guru, but this seems like it lacks data and instead uses scare tactics to attack Dropbox. From the looks of it, DB isn't letting anyone do anything - it's only if you give up local access.
As for cooperating with law enforcement, that's more or less part of how warrants work. It would be illegal to say "no" to a warrant.
Disclosure: I work for Dropbox.
edit: Really? Downvoted for stating an obvious fact? I mean sure, Dropbox is great, but throwing your hands up and saying "that's ... how warrants work" is disingenuous when there are perfectly legal and workable ways around that. Sure, the UX might not be quite as good, but UX compromises are often made for security's sake. (See Firefox Sync's setup for example.)
Also, the web interface, sharing, public folders, perhaps iPhone and Android apps (you have the question of how to get the key TO the device), would not be possible with such a system, at least not anything approaching usability.
And the added complexity is not beneficial for the average case. For the exceptions, Dropbox works great with TrueCrypt or OpenSSL or GPG or whatnot encryption.
A bit more complex, but not much more complex. See Firefox Sync's setup screen for a great execution of strong secret shared over weak password. We've known about EKE for close to 20 years.
> Also, the web interface
Yes, agreed. I'm not convinced it's worth it though.
> sharing, public folders
Yeah, these are a little more complicated. I wonder if some sort of shared secret system could work out here.
> perhaps iPhone and Android apps (you have the question of how to get the key TO the device)
Again, see Firefox Sync.
My desktop is down right now (power supply burned out, ouch) so I think I actually use the web interface more than Dropbox itself, since I only have one computer... And encryption in Javascript is a pain, since you open yourself to man-in-the-middle attacks and such.
I don't know about shared secrets for sharing and such, but I haven't heard of anything even applicable beyond a few academic papers. Beyond, you know, using a different key for every file and then you can email the key to share it. But that doesn't let you revoke access from one person (I've seen papers on how to do that though) and that's also a waste of entropy. I think this is actually a nice area for research (well, maybe it's being done and I'm not aware; again, not a security guy).
Personally, I don't trust closed-source systems with my encryption code, client-side or server-side or not. I'm ok with Firefox Sync, I'm sure someone would notice if it had side channel leaks, but if you want Dropbox to ask for the encryption key, how do you know what it does?
Anyway, I think we're just entering the era where we understand encryption in consumer products.
It would, yes. With Firefox Sync you have two choices, either exchange keys or type in the key. I carry the key around in my wallet, so I don't think that's a big deal.
> And encryption in Javascript is a pain, since you open yourself to man-in-the-middle attacks and such.
SSL helps a lot here. I think uTorrent 3's remote web-accessible UI stuff does something like this, actually. edit: yeah, it generates a key on the client so the server never has access and uses SRP [1] to authenticate and exchange the key [2].
[1] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Secure_Remote... [2] http://www.utorrent.com/legal/web-beta-privacy
Those aren't warrants. Presumably you comply with those, too, so please stop using the "W-word". Those are signed by judges, you are necessarily under US law complying with the ones that aren't, too.
Luckily, I don't do the legal at Dropbox :)
There's no judicial oversight, and they do it 60,000+ times a year.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_PATRIOT_Act