I feel bad about bashing a YC company -- even though I'm not part of YC, I feel that I've been on news.YC for long enough to be at least somewhat part of the YC community -- but seriously, this is your idea of security? I'm sure you can do better.
ZumoDrive rolls a hard six
11–20 of 74 posts
Re: ZumoDrive rolls a hard six
#12I feel bad about bashing a YC company -- even though I'm not part of YC, I feel that I've been on news.YC for long enough to be at least somewhat part of the YC community -- but seriously, this is your idea of security? I'm sure you can do better.
Don't. The only thing I'd suggest is the disclaimer "I'm just the author of a competing service -- Tarsnap. [...]" belongs at the top. It doesn't invalidate your points but if there's any reason to perceive a conflict of interest, the sensible thing is to get it out of the way first, rather than as an aside at the end.
Re: ZumoDrive rolls a hard six
#13The problem I have with ZumoDrive's security claims is not that they're insecure -- they sort of have to be, given the feature set they have -- it's just that their claims are theatrical. They could make things so that data can only be accessed right when the user enters their password, without having to give up the cross-user deduplication that I presume they'd perform, but ultimately, if you want a convenient onlin…
A few good (encrypted!) indices are all you need. You could write something like a WebDAV proxy if you want to make it "universally" accessible.
(Of course, Tarsnap isn't designed for this, but that doesn't mean that it couldn't be.)
Re: ZumoDrive rolls a hard six
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
You should come to my conference talk, "everything you need to know about crypto in 1 hour". :-) Boy, I wish something like that existed It does! I'm giving that talk at BSDCan'10 in May: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1179569
Nice - I thought you were being sarcastic! I don't know if I can make it in person, but I sure hope they tape it and put it online :-D
Re: ZumoDrive rolls a hard six
#15I feel bad about bashing a YC company -- even though I'm not part of YC, I feel that I've been on news.YC for long enough to be at least somewhat part of the YC community -- but seriously, this is your idea of security? I'm sure you can do better.
Don't. The only thing I'd suggest is the disclaimer "I'm just the author of a competing service -- Tarsnap. [...]" belongs at the top. It doesn't invalidate your points but if there's any reason to perceive a conflict of interest, the sensible thing is to get it out of the way first, rather than as an aside at the end.
Re: ZumoDrive rolls a hard six
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't. The only thing I'd suggest is the disclaimer "I'm just the author of a competing service -- Tarsnap. [...]" belongs at the top. It doesn't invalidate your points but if there's any reason to perceive a conflict of interest, the sensible thing is to get it out of the way first, rather than as an aside at the end.
Yup, honestly, the post is really good but the plug at the end gave a linkbait flavor to the whole thing.
Re: ZumoDrive rolls a hard six
#17Re: ZumoDrive rolls a hard six
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yup, honestly, the post is really good but the plug at the end gave a linkbait flavor to the whole thing.
My reaction was, "Oh, this is cperciva's blog, that man knows his stuff."
Re: ZumoDrive rolls a hard six
#19The fact of the matter is that the only real differentiator between Zumodrive and Tarsnap is the integrity of the code that implements the service. Nobody is going to break TLS in order to get Zumodrive data.
Cryptography has exactly one implication for attackers: it is an opportunity to cause unexpected things to happen at the target. This is only possible when you do something unusual with cryptography. From that perspective, Tarsnap worries me more than Zumodrive: there is nothing that is going to go wrong with their SSL implementation that I'll be able to take advantage of, and I can't say that about your contraption.
(Here you will inevitably point to a string of OpenSSL security advisories to attempt to refute this point. You won't be convincing, for two reasons. First, it's been a long time since someone found an OpenSSL flaw that would move the dials for an attacker in a basic one-way-authenticated SSL session. Second, no security practitioner would trust your code more than OpenSSL, which, while terrible, has had something like 15 years of audit exposure.)
From what I can see, nobody professional has stated that they've looked at Zumodrive or Tarsnap. I'm pulling for you, Colin, but you haven't earned the right to impugn other people's security.
You should rewrite your article. Instead of trying to tear down a competitor, you should write an article about how Tarsnap is different from other backup solutions. You should write about how your threat model is different, and how you believe you're the only solution that has been architected to encrypt backup data in such a way that even the hosting providers can't access it.
You blew a bunch of credibility by trying to make these points while sniping at a competitor. Instead of thinking about how great Tarsnap is, I'm left questioning the objectivity of every line you wrote. What a waste! There's a reason every business book in the universe says not to disparage competitors. Go read one!
Re: ZumoDrive rolls a hard six
#20What's wrong with using client-authenticated SSL with predistributed keys (and only trusting the pre-distributed keys)? I trust a well-tested TLS implementation more than I trust whatever crypto I can manage to write myself. Also, to provide the features ZumoDrive does, they have to have access to your unencrypted data - don't they? They aren't even attempting to keep your data safe from their server (and never claim…
What's wrong with using client-authenticated SSL with predistributed keys (and only trusting the pre-distributed keys)? If you set up your own CA and you distribute a CA keyring with only that CA key, you avoid the what-about-China problem. But you still have a heck of a lot of moving parts which can break. (EDIT: Also, I'm 99% certain that ZumoDrive isn't doing this.) I trust a well-tested TLS implementation more th…
Here's an easier argument that lands in the same place: if you roll your own crypto, and it breaks, you will look incompetant. Everybody will ask, "why didn't you just use TLS?", and your answer will be "so I could write this custom protocol that just destroyed my security!" On the other hand, if you use TLS, and someone asks why, you will simply say "because if TLS fails, people are going to target the banks and stock exchanges before they target my service."
For the record: you have Colin Percival on HN suggesting that hand-rolled crypto beats SSL. Colin's a smart guy who really knows crypto.
You also have Thomas Ptacek on HN suggesting that Colin is absolutely full of it. Thomas isn't as smart as Colin, but, on the other hand, Thomas has been breaking software professionally since 1995, and has more crypto findings than Colin.
Make up your own mind.