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Firefox Send: Private, Encrypted File Sharing

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Re: Firefox Send: Private, Encrypted File Sharing

#181

Post by zaroth »

As I recall, there was a Bitcoin wallet service which relied on securing the access key behind the '#' in the URL for its security -- turns out it's not perfectly reliable and shouldn't be used for protecting money. Likewise for files you really need to be secure.

Since boring crypto shouldn't have weird failure modes like this, I'm thinking this design is a big mistake?

EDIT: I think it was Instawallet and apparently while they had robots.txt set to prevent crawling, the theory was people typing their URL into Google (or Omnibar) would alert Google to the URL and it got into search results anyway.

I know that web-keys is based on the theory that since the fragment isn't sent by User-Agents in the Request-Uri that it's secure, but there are things that see the full URL which aren't conforming agents, and it just seems risky for any long-lived secret.

Re: Firefox Send: Private, Encrypted File Sharing

#182

Post by codebolt »

jhasse wrote: post #132
Yoric wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Send is meant to be an improvement on Dropbox & co for a specific use case. Is it perfect? No, it isn't. But it is still a considerable improvement. If you have a better solution in mind for the average user crowd, feel free to suggest it, of course.

Sending the file over an end to end encrypted chat app.

Even then, you are trusting the app to do what it says it's going to do. The only way I feel 100% safe is encrypting the file manually before sending (through whatever platform), and sharing the key through some other medium (preferably word of mouth).

As a Windows user I mostly use 7-zip for this purpose, or the encryption plugin in Notepad++ for text.

Re: Firefox Send: Private, Encrypted File Sharing

#183

Post by intherdfield »

zeveb wrote: post #74
KwanEsq wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key is the hash, which isn't sent over the wire when loading a page. Now granted it's accessible via location.hash in the client, but one has to trust Mozilla not to do that.

> one has to trust Mozilla not to do that. Exactly. One has to trust Mozilla every time one visits the page . They could easily configure it to be malicious one time out of a million (say); what are the odds that they would be caught? Web-page-based crypto is fundamentally insecure, and Mozilla is committing an extremely grave error in encouraging users to trust it (as they also do with their Firefox Accounts). Secur…

>> one has to trust Mozilla not to do that. > > Exactly. One has to trust Mozilla every time one visits > the page. They could easily configure it to be malicious > one time out of a million (say); what are the odds that > they would be caught?

Bear in mind they also make the web browser.

Re: Firefox Send: Private, Encrypted File Sharing

#184

Post by lucb1e »

hollander wrote: post #175
lucb1e wrote: post #173

Let me guess, with free Pocket® integration? Mozilla blew it for me recently in so many ways, I am taking them about as seriously as I would Facebook right now.

How can you compare the Pocket thing with Facebook? The good kid messed up this time. And you can simply ignore it, don't have to use it. Yes like you can decide not to use Facebook, but then all your friends and family use it, or use Instagram of Whatsapp and force you to use it. That includes uploading your complete contact list two or three times. Do you have to use Firefox because your family uses it? I don't thi…

Months after the whole Pocket thing, they destroyed the Firefox on Android homepage to replace it with 60% "Recommended by Pocket" articles. I'm not sure how they determine what's recommended for me, but it seems an awful lot like sending browser history to this company. And even if not, I'm not interested in this bullshit, I just want my bookmarks homescreen (with HN and some other sites I check regularly). Oh and the WebExtension thing which breaks every single reason I'd use Firefox over Chrome. All extensions that do not exist for Chrome because Firefox' model was more powerful, can no longer exist in the new Firefox.

It's terrible decision after terrible decision. In another HN thread someone called it intentional decisions by someone wishing Mozilla harm. I don't think there's bad intentions, but I can see why it seems like it.

Re: Firefox Send: Private, Encrypted File Sharing

#185

Post by narag »

This is actually very useful. You can send files from and to mobile devices and desktop. Delete on download doesn't seem to be a problem, just adjust your storage strategy. Security could be acceptable for most use cases. I hope they add it to the browser.

Re: Firefox Send: Private, Encrypted File Sharing

#186

Post by Dylan16807 »

the8472 wrote: post #169
carussell wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spec out and implement resource pinning, already. Like RFC 8246, but authored more with the user's interests in mind, rather than the service's. As a show of nothing-up-the-sleeve, a service asserts that it's in a stable state and will continue to serve exact copies of the resources as they exist now—that they will not change out from beneath the client in subsequent requests. When a user chooses to use resource pinn…

This would also have the added bonus that one could reload such pinned resources from anywhere once you got the pin. Even without TLS setup or having to trust certificate chains. Caching proxies would suddenly become viable again because only the first download has to through HTTPS while "I don't have this in the local cache anymore, can you serve me this content" requests could go through sidechannels or outside the…

How many pins would you expect a browser instance to have? I feel like most of the time the pinned content could fit in the browser cache and make this variety of proxy-side caching pointless.

Re: Firefox Send: Private, Encrypted File Sharing

#187

Post by indiv0 »

jwcacces wrote: post #112
ElijahLynn wrote: post #102

One thing that could be improved with this is to have an option for a human readable/typeable link. I wanted to quickly transfer a file from my desktop to my phone. Used Send and realized I didn't want to type that cryptographic URL. I ran the Send link through Typer.in (specializing in hand-typed urls) and it worked as I initially expected. However, it would be nice if Send had this functionality by default.

Typer.in stores the link you give it, and returns a human readable lookup link. The whole point of Send is that the link includes the secret key to decrypt your file. Whoever you give that secret to, including Typer.in can get the file. The Send link must include the secret key, because no one else should get it, and that key must be of sufficient length to protect your file. Thus human-readable-izing it could do not…

At least at the moment, downloading the file once removes it from Mozilla's servers. So in the event typer.in used the URL you provided to download the file, you would know as the file would no longer be accessible.

Re: Firefox Send: Private, Encrypted File Sharing

#188

Post by akavel »

zaroth wrote: post #181

As I recall, there was a Bitcoin wallet service which relied on securing the access key behind the '#' in the URL for its security -- turns out it's not perfectly reliable and shouldn't be used for protecting money. Likewise for files you really need to be secure. Since boring crypto shouldn't have weird failure modes like this, I'm thinking this design is a big mistake? EDIT: I think it was Instawallet and apparentl…

Given that it's explicitly a short-lived secret (below 24h), and one-use - so probably Google crawler (or typing into url bar - presumably to immediately follow by Enter) would invalidate it on first access - I don't feel convinced any of those concerns apply?

Re: Firefox Send: Private, Encrypted File Sharing

#189

Post by thatzerodude »

Vinnl wrote: post #138
KwanEsq wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key is the hash, which isn't sent over the wire when loading a page. Now granted it's accessible via location.hash in the client, but one has to trust Mozilla not to do that.

> one has to trust Mozilla not to do that Well, the advantage of the client is that you can inspect the source, so you can verify that it doesn't actually access location.hash.

> Well, the advantage of the client is that you can inspect the source

To quote Brad Spender (before he too became blind):

> The “many eyes” of open source are blind, uninterested, or selling to governments for profit (it’s not the 1992 AD scene anymore)

That's why it's so important to support open audits, such as what OSTIF is trying to do.

Re: Firefox Send: Private, Encrypted File Sharing

#190

Post by akavel »

wybiral wrote: post #72
bubblethink wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both parties would have to be online for any p2p solution to work. And if they are online, there are plenty of ways to create a p2p link. It is complicated by things like NAT though. However, that is the less common case. In most cases, the receiver isn't going to be online. So you need an intermediate server, and that's how you end up with third party solutions.

Yeah, the "being online" detail seems like the problem. It would be best if the encrypted data were distributed (something like IPFS) but then why would peers host files that aren't for them.

AFAIR, there's already some service on IPFS which will pin files for you for money. I.e.: why would someone? Because you'd pay them for that - simple :)
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