Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Etebase – An open source and end-to-end encrypted Firebase alternative

etebase.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 82 posts

Re: Show HN: Etebase – An open source and end-to-end encrypted Firebase alternative

#11

Post by tasn »

slooonz wrote: post #9
tasn wrote: post #2

Excited to finally post it on HN. It's something I've been working on for the last year, though in a sense, for much longer! Etebase is an open-source SDK and backend-as-a-service for building end-to-end encrypted applications. Think Firebase but end-to-end encrypted. More users care about the privacy and security of their data every day, and encrypted applications are becoming mainstream. However, talking with devel…

Is there any technical document describing how it works ? For example, order-preserving indices (for range queries) are often an issue in end-to-end databases ; did your design allow to you to provide them, or did you just consider solving this problem out-of-scope ?

There are docs here: https://docs.etebase.com/ Though they mostly focus on how to use rather than how it works (though we are making progress on that section).

As for your specific question: we currently don't solve that, but we plan on doing it in the near future. Our approach will be to maintain a client-side index that will be synced across devices. Etebase already utilities to maintain consistency, so this can be done safely.

This question, and ones like it, are exactly why we created Etebase. Building encrypted applications is fundamentally different and comes with a lot of challenges. We plan on continue building all of the tools needed to develop using this different paradigm.

Re: Show HN: Etebase – An open source and end-to-end encrypted Firebase alternative

#12

Post by joel_dice »

tasn wrote: post #2

Excited to finally post it on HN. It's something I've been working on for the last year, though in a sense, for much longer! Etebase is an open-source SDK and backend-as-a-service for building end-to-end encrypted applications. Think Firebase but end-to-end encrypted. More users care about the privacy and security of their data every day, and encrypted applications are becoming mainstream. However, talking with devel…

Nice work! I spent about six months pursuing the exact same idea about five years ago with the hope of building a company around it. I got reasonably far with a prototype, but gave up on the business side of things after doing more extensive market research and interviews.

One of the people I talked to had been involved with a startup called Adrenaline Mobility which did something very similar, but ultimately ran out of runway and was acquired by Twitter. He told an interesting story about how they (over-)built a highly scalable service but had a really hard time selling it. Those who lack the training to know the difference between good security and hand waving didn't see the value, and those who did have the training and skills didn't trust a third party to do it right anyway.

Nonetheless, a lot has changed in the past five years, and end-to-end encryption is more widely appreciated now. I hope you have better luck with the commercial side of things; this looks like a very promising start.

Re: Show HN: Etebase – An open source and end-to-end encrypted Firebase alternative

#13

Post by rathboma »

nbclark wrote: post #10
rathboma wrote: post #5

I make Beekeeper Studio ( https://beekeeperstudio.io ). This looks really interesting, especially as it is open source. Do you have many FOSS users self-deploying it?

Off topic, but just checked out Beekeeper - Seems like a solid SQL IDE! Had been using Postico before, but going to give yours a try.

Awesome thanks for the kind words!

Re: Show HN: Etebase – An open source and end-to-end encrypted Firebase alternative

#15

Post by codethief »

This looks exactly like the application I've been wanting to build for quite some time! Thank god I didn't have to. :)

Question: The Collection/Item data structure seems simple but also quite powerful at the same time. However, for lots of applications I imagine it would be nice to have some common abstractions available in the API instead of having to roll my own. I'm thinking of, e.g., data structures like queues, stacks, dictionaries, trees, and also conflict resolution strategies. Are there any plans to add those to the API?

Re: Show HN: Etebase – An open source and end-to-end encrypted Firebase alternative

#16

Post by tasn »

codethief wrote: post #15

This looks exactly like the application I've been wanting to build for quite some time! Thank god I didn't have to. :) Question: The Collection/Item data structure seems simple but also quite powerful at the same time. However, for lots of applications I imagine it would be nice to have some common abstractions available in the API instead of having to roll my own. I'm thinking of, e.g., data structures like queues,…

This is a great question, and the answer is a resounding yes!

The API is already powerful, and powers real applications, but it's quite raw. We plan on gradually building all of the above and more. We just first needed a solid base to work from.

Re: Show HN: Etebase – An open source and end-to-end encrypted Firebase alternative

#17

Post by mnahkies »

tasn wrote: post #4
Aachen wrote: post #3

Cool to see this launched here, we've been using EteSync for a while and it's nice to see it expanding to more end to end encrypted things!

Thanks. :) As said in the other comment, our mission is to encrypt everything, and this is the next step towards that! It's actually something that we've been planning since forever, but it's so nice to finally have it out!

Looks like an awesome product.

Is the item metadata encrypted as well, or just the content?

Do you have any documentation explaining the encryption process in detail?

Re: Show HN: Etebase – An open source and end-to-end encrypted Firebase alternative

#18

Post by tasn »

snissn wrote: post #14

can you explain key management? is it via the user's password? what happens if passwords are lost or changed?

We are working on providing a formal spec, but the gist of it is already documented here: https://docs.etebase.com/protocol-specs/authentication

A secure encryption key is derived from the user's password using a random salt an Argon2id, though the data is encrypted with a randomly generated key. Keys are generated for each "layer" of the account (so one for the account, one for collections, and etc), so each part can be re-encrypted (or not) separately if needed.

Password change: you can either re-encrypt the data if you want, or more likely, if the password hasn't be compromised, just re-encrypt the main encryption key that's used to encrypt the data.

Password lost: tough luck. We can't help you recover that, because we don't have access to your data. Though we have some ideas on how to maybe enable recovery (using key custodians, shamir secret sharing, or another method, haven't decided).

Re: Show HN: Etebase – An open source and end-to-end encrypted Firebase alternative

#19

Post by tasn »

joel_dice wrote: post #12
tasn wrote: post #2

Excited to finally post it on HN. It's something I've been working on for the last year, though in a sense, for much longer! Etebase is an open-source SDK and backend-as-a-service for building end-to-end encrypted applications. Think Firebase but end-to-end encrypted. More users care about the privacy and security of their data every day, and encrypted applications are becoming mainstream. However, talking with devel…

Nice work! I spent about six months pursuing the exact same idea about five years ago with the hope of building a company around it. I got reasonably far with a prototype, but gave up on the business side of things after doing more extensive market research and interviews. One of the people I talked to had been involved with a startup called Adrenaline Mobility which did something very similar, but ultimately ran out…

Thanks a lot! Things have indeed changed, and I feel like the public is really starting to understand the dangers with having their data exposed. I've been running EteSync for years now, and it's still growing.

I'd love to have a chat with you to learn from your experience if you are willing! My email is tom at etebase, please drop me a line (or let me know how to best reach you).

Thanks again!

Re: Show HN: Etebase – An open source and end-to-end encrypted Firebase alternative

#20

Post by fabrice_d »

tasn wrote: post #18
snissn wrote: post #14

can you explain key management? is it via the user's password? what happens if passwords are lost or changed?

We are working on providing a formal spec, but the gist of it is already documented here: https://docs.etebase.com/protocol-specs/authentication A secure encryption key is derived from the user's password using a random salt an Argon2id, though the data is encrypted with a randomly generated key. Keys are generated for each "layer" of the account (so one for the account, one for collections, and etc), so each part ca…

What about switching devices? Is the password enough (I guess not since it's salted)?
Post reply on HN