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Dropbox Head Responds To Snowden Claims About Privacy
First time accepted submitter Carly Page writes When asked for its response to Edward Snowden's claims that "Dropbox is hostile to privacy", Dropbox told The INQUIRER that users concerned about privacy should add their own encryption. The firm warned however that if users do, not all of the service's features will work. Head of Product at Dropbox for Business Ilya Fushman says: "We have data encrypted on our servers. We think of encryption beyond that as a users choice. If you look at our third-party developer ecosystem you'll find many client-side encryption apps....It's hard to do things like rich document rendering if they're client-side encrypted. Search is also difficult, we can't index the content of files. Finally, we need users to understand that if they use client-side encryption and lose the password, we can't then help them recover those files."
With the keys we readily hand over when warranted.... o_O
Dropbox has Condoleeza Rice on its board of directors. If anyone remembers, she was Secretary of State and also the president's National Security Advisor during the Bush administration. She basically allowed torture, and is responsible for Guantanamo. She had no problem with torturing people without even doing a basic check to see if the person being tortured was guilty of the crime he was being tortured for. And you want to talk about spying? She was part of the administration that developed the PATRIOT Act. The justification being "it's ok to spy on foreigners" .. Oh and we can DECLARE you a foreigner without any due process by making you prove your Americanness. She was cool with torturing foreigners without giving them any sort of due process, so why would you assume that she wont torture citizens if she was scared into doing so? We already know she doesn't think people need privacy.
It's not stupid; it's just a fact. Obviously they can't do any of that crap if they can't decrypt your data, but that's fine by me.
Yeah, uh, because all "cloud" services aren't inherently ridiculous for anyone to consider secure or anything...
It's not stupid; it's just a fact. Obviously they can't do any of that crap if they can't decrypt your data, but that's fine by me.
Exactly. Gotta love the knee-jerk, I can't have a logical thought because I'm just so ready to rant about "the man" bullshit. Especially since it sounds like it's coming from someone who doesn't even use or understand the service.
Dropbox is file storage, plain and simple. I use it to make a few music files and some reading material available across my devices. That's it's main function, to store/share files.
All that other shit he is talking about that encryption won't work with is all fluff and ancillary stuff - I name my files properly, for example, so I don't need them to search within them for me. The service works just fine with encrypted files - you just can't use the fancy doodads that you don't really need anyway.
I applaud him for being honest - if this was certain other companies they'd be telling you "oh trust us. It's secure!" He's being honest - it's a dumping spot for files, if you want encryption, BYO.
Christ some of the folks around these parts don't know their heads from their asses - use the words encryption or privacy and they don't even listen or understand wtf is being talked about they just automatically jump to tired fear mongering rhetoric. Just like the folks who take rifles strapped across their backs to Starbucks - I want to say, WTF are you so scared of? And if you do have something to be scared of - stay the fuck home, or in this case, don't be a complete retard and use a "cloud" service to begin with.
So, you would have preferred a positive sounding statement indicating that they are aware that some users have privacy concerns and a vague reference to ongoing efforts to address these concerns?
I didn't find that response "worst of all time". It came across as lacking in the bullshit department, almost refreshingly so, actually.
Steve Gibson's mantra: TNO. If the host has your encryption password/key, then they can't be trusted. If you don't believe that, ask Snowden's email provider, Lavabit's founder Ladar Levison: http://www.wired.com/2014/04/l...
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
iDrive, which is supposed to be a remote backup service, has a similar problem. They used to be a honest remote backup service, with client-side encryption. (They didn't protect the client password very well on the client machine, but at least the server didn't have it.) File contents were encrypted, but filenames were not, so you could look at logs and the directory tree on line. Then they came out with a "new version" of the service, one that is "web based" and offers "sharing".
For "sharing" to work, of course, they need to know your encryption key. They suggest using the "default encryption key". Even if you're not "sharing", when you want to recover a copy of a file, you're prompted to enter your encryption key onto a web page. The web page immediately sends the encryption key to the server as plain text, as can be seen from a browser log. Asked about this, they first denied the problem, then, when presented with a browser log, refused to answer further questions.
They try real hard to get their hands on your encryption key. After you log into their web site, a huge pop-up demands your encryption key. Without it, some of the menu items at the top of the page still work, and with some difficulty, you can actually find logs of what you backed up. You can't browse your directory tree, though.
It's possible to use the service securely (maybe), but you have to run only the application for recovery, and never use the web-based service. They don't tell you that.
This isn't a free service. I pay them $150 a year.
me too. i was the guy who wasn't wearing pants.
The main reason that I suspect DropBox discourages encryption is that they rely a lot on deduplication to reduce their costs. If everyone encrypted their files, then even two identical files would have different representations server-side if owned by different users, so their costs would go up a lot.
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Yea, we use a very expesnsive cloud service that per the contract is encrypted at rest and in transit. After 5yrs I happened to have a networking issue and did a packet capture on the stream... no encryption. So we approached them... "Encryption? No, we don't do that..." We explained that it was in the contract and they HAD to do that. So after 2 months they had to move us to a "Special" server and we were encrypted. I checked the packets again and we were at least encrypted in transit. A few months later we had another trouble ticket with them. One of their techs was working on it and explained how he logged in an edited the table raw to fix it. So I asked how he could do that if the data was encrypted. "Encryption? No, we don't do that..." ugh... so now we're supposedly "really" encrypted.
The problem with cloud services is they can lie cheat and steal with your data and there's nothing you can do about it. You can't verify it, you can't test it, and if anything happens to it you wouldn't have a clue. You're entirely at the mercy of the provider and as time goes on their internal staff can turn over, competence can wane, controls can get lax, and you'll have no idea any of that is happening.
You realise dropbox is free, right? Why should they do something expensive like offer encryption on a service that is (a) free, and (b) for sharing files. Sharing's hard if your stuff is encrypted, and sharing is the source of most of Dropbox's value.
If you want encryption, then fine, do it yourself. You obviously know that your stuff won't be indexable or shareable so won't be calling for support or slagging Dropbox off online when you find indexing and sharing not working.
There's room to suggest Dropbox should offer a pay-for encrypted service. The thing is, no matter how well they do it, it'll always be vulnerable to government interference, and it'll never be fully trusted anyway. BYO means no government interference and trust *for the relatively small number of people who care* without raising the costs too much for the multitudes who don't.
So, when you contracted with these folks did they issue you a kilobyte-long encryption key with a warning not to lose it or your data would be permanently inaccessible? And did you have to use that key every time you stored or retrieved data with them? If not, then that's your glaring red flag that any encryption they might offer is a sham. Even if it were stored encrypted on their servers, if you can access it without supplying the encryption key that means they're essentially storing the keys in the lock to the safe.
Which is why, honestly, I'm okay with folks like Dropbox being a bit lax about security, provided they're open about it. Encryption in transit is nice if you just want to keep idle prying eyes off your not-terribly-sensitive data, and SSH provides a convenient way to implement it. But if you want real security on the stored data the *only* way to get it is if you do just what they're suggesting and exercise total personal control over the encryption. That data should be securely encrypted before it ever leaves your computers, and you are the only one who should possess the keys to decrypt it. If you want people in your organization to have easy access without worrying about encryption then establish a local proxy that will transparently handle the encryption and decryption as data flows through it to your cloud provider.
Actually that could be a great internet appliance - it could even perform indexing of the data if you wanted it to, while providing near-perfect security for *any* remote data-server offering. If anyone decides to market such a thing I want 1% for the idea - we can make each other rich.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.