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Introducing the Keybase filesystem

keybase.io

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Re: Introducing the Keybase filesystem

#441

Post by chadnickbok »

IshKebab wrote: post #315
chadnickbok wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's also impressive is doing away with Dropbox's clunky "selective sync". While having everything stored locally sounds like a good idea at first, as you store more and more data is gets less and less user-friendly; in other words, power-users get the worst user experience. Additionally, creating an easy way to share files with friends without taking up their quota is awesome. This looks like it could be a very, v…

Not storing files locally sounds like a good idea at first - you don't have any syncing issues. But nobody has a perfect always-on internet connection. Having files local is worth the occasional sync cockup.

Oh for sure there's a reason that approach is dropbox's default - its really hard for people to understand their files aren't really "there".

That said, my point is more that for people who start storing 100GB+ of data, it becomes harder and harder to actually manage which bits you want at any time.

Re: Introducing the Keybase filesystem

#442

Post by grey-area »

volaski wrote: post #165
aftbit wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dropbox synchronizes files between your computer and their servers. Keybase stores the files on their servers and only downloads/uploads them "on demand". Think of your web browser accessing gmail.com versus running something like Thunderbird that downloads your mail locally. As a benefit, it's much simpler to implement - you don't need to work as hard to handle conflicts where two people made incompatible changes wh…

so if i understand correctly, the model is more like the old megaupload/rapidshare/etc.....so what's new? Is it that they provide multiple ways of sharing tied to social media, compared to public/private/password protected mode of sharing for those aforementioned services?

What's new is transparent client-side public key encryption with a database of verified keys.

Re: Introducing the Keybase filesystem

#444

Post by kedean »

chc4 wrote: post #108
jrockway wrote: post #92

> Your app will encrypt just for you and then awake and rekey in the background when that Twitter user joins and announces a key. Isn't this the weak link in the chain? If you can convince the client that you're the person the data was encrypted for, it will re-encrypt it with a new key and send it to you, thus making the encryption useless. What's the protection against this, other than "don't worry, we won't introd…

I'm not sure about that either. The weakest link seems to be a national security letter to Keybase where they distribute a backdoored version of the FS driver to Alice, and adds the key of Eve to all messages also encrypted to Bob. However, Keybase can't just broadcast "Eve on twitter is Bob!" - the client gets that announcement and links you to the tweet that claims it, where you audit the twitter handle, key finger…

If the NSA is your adversary model, Keybase isn't for you. If the NSA is your adversary model, NO system involving any central servers is for you, unless they only act as a dumb relay. Since Keybase is also the provider of your proof that another party is who they claim to be, they will always be suspectable to a government adversary. If you want to be NSA-safe, you can't trust any third party companies code, and that just leaves you DOA.

tldr; this isn't for the NSA adversary model

Re: Introducing the Keybase filesystem

#446

Post by patcon »

StavrosK wrote: post #136
cyphar wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zcash is an actually anonymous cryptocurrency (BitCoin is not, since senders and receivers are public). The crypto is definitely impressive (which it is, it uses zero knowledge proofs -- which are really cool math -- for a lot of its sending operations).

I see, thanks! I'll look more into it, it sounds interesting. By the way, how did you manage to install Keybase FS? It won't work for me at all.

I managed to find the prerelease packages in the build scripts, and got it working through that. Make sure you restart the keybase service, as it doesn't happen automatically

https://s3.amazonaws.com/prerelease.keybase.io/index.html

Re: Introducing the Keybase filesystem

#447

Post by patcon »

microtonal wrote: post #321
a_bonobo wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to join, since they're still in alpha they let you wait - I just signed up and I'm user "#19177 in the alpha queue"

Some of us had keybase.io accounts for a while now ;). I think we have to wait until the client packages are updated with kbfs support.

On Ubuntu, mine wasn't auto-updated to get KBFS, but I found pre-releases that work:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/prerelease.keybase.io/index.html

Re: Introducing the Keybase filesystem

#448

Post by sigmonsays »

oconnor663 wrote: post #259
CamperBob2 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're calling it a "file system," whatever that means. Presumably it means you can create encrypted virtual disk partitions that represent network storage shared with various peers, and treat those partitions as if they were resident on local drives. Agreed that they need to work on the narrative a bit.

On Linux and OSX, Keybase will be a FUSE filesystem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_in_Userspace .

Any way to get early access?

Re: Introducing the Keybase filesystem

#450

Post by c_r_w »

patcon wrote: post #447
microtonal wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of us had keybase.io accounts for a while now ;). I think we have to wait until the client packages are updated with kbfs support.

On Ubuntu, mine wasn't auto-updated to get KBFS, but I found pre-releases that work: https://s3.amazonaws.com/prerelease.keybase.io/index.html

I came here to find this. Upvote for you sir.
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