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How Dropbox Hacks Your Mac

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Re: How Dropbox Hacks Your Mac

#181

Post by kybernetyk »

newhouseb wrote: post #121

Hi HN — Ben from Dropbox here on the desktop client team. Wanted to clarify a few things — - Clearly we need to do a better job communicating about Dropbox’s OS integration. We ask for permissions once but don’t describe what we’re doing or why. We’ll fix that. - We only ask for privileges we actively use -- but unfortunately some of the permissions aren’t as granular as we would like. - We use accessibility APIs for…

>but unfortunately some of the permissions aren’t as granular as we would like.

Nice euphemism for "catch all" permissions...

Re: How Dropbox Hacks Your Mac

#182

Post by badminton1 »

newhouseb wrote: post #121

Hi HN — Ben from Dropbox here on the desktop client team. Wanted to clarify a few things — - Clearly we need to do a better job communicating about Dropbox’s OS integration. We ask for permissions once but don’t describe what we’re doing or why. We’ll fix that. - We only ask for privileges we actively use -- but unfortunately some of the permissions aren’t as granular as we would like. - We use accessibility APIs for…

Now a malware can target your scripts and get a free ride to all your system yay.

Re: How Dropbox Hacks Your Mac

#183

Post by simias »

794CD01 wrote: post #85
aRationalMoose wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got a good alt suggestion?

Spideroak, if your reason for switching is privacy.

I use (and pay for) Spideroak pretty much for that reason but given that their client is not open source I kinda feel like it's just homeopathic security. They could backdoor my client and I wouldn't know better.

So I definitely wouldn't store very sensitive stuff on SpiderOak either but I guess it's slightly better than dropbox.

Re: How Dropbox Hacks Your Mac

#184

Post by chmars »

xenadu02 wrote: post #136
newhouseb wrote: post #121

Hi HN — Ben from Dropbox here on the desktop client team. Wanted to clarify a few things — - Clearly we need to do a better job communicating about Dropbox’s OS integration. We ask for permissions once but don’t describe what we’re doing or why. We’ll fix that. - We only ask for privileges we actively use -- but unfortunately some of the permissions aren’t as granular as we would like. - We use accessibility APIs for…

Can you also tell us why Dropbox eats lots of CPU cycles anytime there is any filesystem activity? If I unzip a large archive in /tmp, Dropbox is eating 60% of my CPU. If I open the new Xcode for the first time (and the system verifies all the signatures) Dropbox is eating 100% of one CPU. It really seems like the Dropbox client is monitoring the entire filesystem (all FSEvents) instead of just the dropbox syncing fo…

Same problem here. My 3 year-old i5 Retina MacBook Pro is often slow because Dropbox uses 100 % of one CPU. And it gets hot too …

Re: How Dropbox Hacks Your Mac

#185

Post by chmars »

xenadu02 wrote: post #136
newhouseb wrote: post #121

Hi HN — Ben from Dropbox here on the desktop client team. Wanted to clarify a few things — - Clearly we need to do a better job communicating about Dropbox’s OS integration. We ask for permissions once but don’t describe what we’re doing or why. We’ll fix that. - We only ask for privileges we actively use -- but unfortunately some of the permissions aren’t as granular as we would like. - We use accessibility APIs for…

Can you also tell us why Dropbox eats lots of CPU cycles anytime there is any filesystem activity? If I unzip a large archive in /tmp, Dropbox is eating 60% of my CPU. If I open the new Xcode for the first time (and the system verifies all the signatures) Dropbox is eating 100% of one CPU. It really seems like the Dropbox client is monitoring the entire filesystem (all FSEvents) instead of just the dropbox syncing fo…

Same problem here. My 3 year-old i5 Retina MacBook Pro is often slow because Dropbox uses 100 % of one CPU. And it gets hot too …

Re: How Dropbox Hacks Your Mac

#186

Post by moefogs »

riobard wrote: post #147
newhouseb wrote: post #121

Hi HN — Ben from Dropbox here on the desktop client team. Wanted to clarify a few things — - Clearly we need to do a better job communicating about Dropbox’s OS integration. We ask for permissions once but don’t describe what we’re doing or why. We’ll fix that. - We only ask for privileges we actively use -- but unfortunately some of the permissions aren’t as granular as we would like. - We use accessibility APIs for…

At this point you need to follow up with convincing technical details of why Dropbox needs the circumvention to counter the accusation and rebuild the damaged trust. The reason for needing Accessibility API listed in your response is pretty vague, especially for those Mac users not having Microsoft products tainting their systems. I've deleted Dropbox from my Mac for now. I'm not installing it back till there's reaso…

Let's be honest about this. Dropbox has always been awful with security. They used to flat out lie about encryption (pretending they encrypted server side, when they weren't at all). They've had numerous other incidents, including ones where Arash treated affected customers horribly.

Dropbox has hired some good people, but the foundation consists of a great CEO, and a customer-hostile CTO who doesn't give a fuck about security. It will NEVER be a good product because of that.

Drew Houston would be WAY wealthier today if he'd fired that worthless piece of shit he calls a CTO years ago.

Re: How Dropbox Hacks Your Mac

#187

Post by hereathomie »

xenadu02 wrote: post #136
newhouseb wrote: post #121

Hi HN — Ben from Dropbox here on the desktop client team. Wanted to clarify a few things — - Clearly we need to do a better job communicating about Dropbox’s OS integration. We ask for permissions once but don’t describe what we’re doing or why. We’ll fix that. - We only ask for privileges we actively use -- but unfortunately some of the permissions aren’t as granular as we would like. - We use accessibility APIs for…

Can you also tell us why Dropbox eats lots of CPU cycles anytime there is any filesystem activity? If I unzip a large archive in /tmp, Dropbox is eating 60% of my CPU. If I open the new Xcode for the first time (and the system verifies all the signatures) Dropbox is eating 100% of one CPU. It really seems like the Dropbox client is monitoring the entire filesystem (all FSEvents) instead of just the dropbox syncing fo…

Just checked this myself on a MacPro. You can see the DropBox process kick in with CPU usage while opening big apps like Photoshop or Xcode. Not a lot on this MacPro (~3%), but it's always in time with an app opening. Oddly there's no corresponding disk access associated with the Dropbox process when looking at it on the Disk tab of Activity Monitor.

Would definitely like an explanation of what's going on here.

Re: How Dropbox Hacks Your Mac

#188

Post by kuschku »

skybrian wrote: post #155
kuschku wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, just as ABP has been good about accepting PRs to add "unobtrusive ads" - until they started demanding money. NEVER give this power to a central authority that's not democratically controlled. And yet, some people still do that mistake.

All open source projects have some kind of "central control" in the sense that they can accept or reject pull requests and define what the official version is. But you can fork them, so it should be okay, right?

Exactly, but I can’t fork AMP – as Google decides which fork gets preferred treatment by them

Re: How Dropbox Hacks Your Mac

#189

Post by leggomylibro »

entilzha wrote: post #71
new299 wrote: post #29

Dropbox circumventing security restrictions (albeit for legit reasons) is particularly worrying because they have board members who support warrentless surveillance. In my mind Dropbox became a company not worth supporting when Rice joined Dropbox's board ( http://www.drop-dropbox.com/ ). Personally, with a board member who advocates warrentless surveillance it seems unlikely that we share similar views on the securi…

After Rice joined I actually completely stopped using Dropbox, transferred files, and deleted my account.

Ditto; now I use SpiderOak which has a solid no-knowledge replacement, but I hear Box is also good.

Re: How Dropbox Hacks Your Mac

#190

Post by bluetwo »

I noticed about 6 months ago that Dropbox was on this list and disabled it the normal way. It stayed disabled and also didn't cause any problems using the software.

Now, why how did Evernote get on the list?

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