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Keybase launches encrypted Git

keybase.io

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Re: Keybase launches encrypted Git

#81
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I love Keybase unconditionally and if you guys weren't rolling in physical offices (and not one in Boston) I'd have been beating down your door to come work there--I think what Keybase is doing is important and it's something I'd love to work on. But I have a serious question that maybe you can answer, and it's something everybody who I've showed this to has asked me: How is Keybase gonna make money? How am I assu…

We believe the right long-term answer for Keybase is finding a way to charge large corporations and offer pretty much everything else for free. Obviously there would have to be some paid tier if you really wanted 10TB of storage or something, but very few people want that right now. We're still just getting started. Of course to achieve our goal, we'll also have to find a way to distinguish communities - which we'll…

Everything you just said makes perfect sense.

That being said, I think Keybase is one of the most important companies around right now. I would gladly pay $10/month, even if literally all it did was put a "Supporter" badge on my profile. I'm sure hundreds of other people agree.

Crypto is far too important for it to remain locked away behind GPG.

Re: Keybase launches encrypted Git

#83
post #72

just to clarify: 1. Do you need a private git repository? 2. Is everything really encrypted? 3. If everything is encrypted how can i access it through Git Desktop?

re: #1 I just tried it - they are giving you an encrypted git remote. So you create a new repo with them, then you can clone it somewhere (or add it as a remote) and push to it.

Re: Keybase launches encrypted Git

#84

Nice to see people work on git remote helpers, a shame that there's already a fine remote helper that is not tied to a specific hosting provider & uses GPG[0] already. 0: https://spwhitton.name/tech/code/git-remote-gcrypt/

I came here precisely to see how this compares to git-remote-gcrypt (which I use to protect my password-safe filenames).

Anyone from keybase prepared to comment?

Re: Keybase launches encrypted Git

#85
post #72

just to clarify: 1. Do you need a private git repository? 2. Is everything really encrypted? 3. If everything is encrypted how can i access it through Git Desktop?

Git repository are private for you or for a team that you select.

Yes, everything is encrypted on your machine locally.

Re: Keybase launches encrypted Git

#86
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I love Keybase unconditionally and if you guys weren't rolling in physical offices (and not one in Boston) I'd have been beating down your door to come work there--I think what Keybase is doing is important and it's something I'd love to work on. But I have a serious question that maybe you can answer, and it's something everybody who I've showed this to has asked me: How is Keybase gonna make money? How am I assu…

We believe the right long-term answer for Keybase is finding a way to charge large corporations and offer pretty much everything else for free. Obviously there would have to be some paid tier if you really wanted 10TB of storage or something, but very few people want that right now. We're still just getting started. Of course to achieve our goal, we'll also have to find a way to distinguish communities - which we'll…

Piggybacking off of the original question, I too have a question in this scope:

With all the products you're offering, is there any indication which products will be staples of Keybase? Eg, I'm always hesitant of the "Google Product", where something gets added only to be abandoned ~1yr later after it doesn't gain the traction the company expected.

For example, I'd love to get my wife and I switched to Keybase Chat from Telegram. With that said, I love the features of Telegram, they're killing it for me honestly, but I can't expect Keybase to compete with Telegram unless they're really invested in it.

So which products from Keybase are one-off experiments, and which are long-roadmapped products - expected to have continued development and support for years to come? I'm having trouble understanding what to trust.

Note, none of this is critical to Keybase. I'm wary of startups in general, despite loving you guys, so I'm just seeking understanding. I appreciate whatever information you can give me, even if small :)

Re: Keybase launches encrypted Git

#87
post #6

I'm really happy about this. I have private repos for personal information (e.g., tax spreadsheets going back a decade) that I keep synchronized across machines, and have to jump through hoops to get an encrypted authoritative remote source. Right now I do that with an encrypted partition on a private VM. And, it really sucks that GitHub does not encrypt data at rest: --- SNIP from https://help.github.com/articles/gi…

Out of curiosity: why do you keep such documents in repositories instead of simply in a filesystem (on an encrypted volume, backed up and possibly synced across devices)? Tax spreadsheets usually don't change, so there's no need for version history (if anything, new rows for new years are added, but without changing past data).

I ask this because I'm trying to figure out a solution for myself for keeping sensitive personal information and I never thought about storing such documents in a repository. Maybe I am missing something and your use case will open my eyes. Thanks!

Re: Keybase launches encrypted Git

#89
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It certainly depends on the threat model, but in this case I have to agree with Github---adding at-rest encryption would be unlikely to make their product significantly more secure, and it would certainly be nowhere as secure as Keybase. With Keybase, the data is encrypted on the client, and the keys stay on the client. Assuming the crypto is done right, there is fundamentally no way for Keybase to read the data, and…

Exactly. The only thing that at-rest encryption would prevent is someone walking into a datacenter (or wherever the drives are physically stored) and nabbing one. An attacker is much more likely to gain access to a live system, where the data would be readily accessible.

Depends on who you are.... I know for us, physical datacenter security is tricky to ensure in a lot of countries, especially from government actors.
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