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Show HN: SlikSafe – A decentralized, end-to-end encrypted alternative to Dropbox

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Show HN: SlikSafe – A decentralized, end-to-end encrypted alternative to Dropbox

#41

Post by newman314 »

jeroenhd wrote: post #28

So, how does this compare to a solution like Bittorrent Sync? And, perhaps more interestingly, why would this become popular where BT Sync failed to live up to the hype? Furthermore, storage can be paid for by crypto. Does this mean the storage is linked to some kind of cryptocurrency, or is there some kind of central payment system that converts crypto into actual value in the system?

BTW this has now been renamed to Resilio Sync.

I still use Resilio but am looking for an alternative since development seems pretty dead at this point (no updates for months).

Re: Show HN: SlikSafe – A decentralized, end-to-end encrypted alternative to Dropbox

#42

Post by gtsop »

I haven't really understood how the "decentralized" comes into place. My notion of decentralization is the existence of multiple instances managed by unrelated people, such that the service keeps going if one actor falls down. From what I see here, the decentralization lies in the fact that the central service stores the data across multiple servers. So it's not technically speaking a lie, but i would say it is a bit missleading.

Edit: If this is/was a trully decentralized tool (which would imply some sort of open source code to host it) i would be stoked

Re: Show HN: SlikSafe – A decentralized, end-to-end encrypted alternative to Dropbox

#43

Post by tata71 »

gtsop wrote: post #42

I haven't really understood how the "decentralized" comes into place. My notion of decentralization is the existence of multiple instances managed by unrelated people, such that the service keeps going if one actor falls down. From what I see here, the decentralization lies in the fact that the central service stores the data across multiple servers. So it's not technically speaking a lie, but i would say it is a bit…

Distributed. Federated.

Re: Show HN: SlikSafe – A decentralized, end-to-end encrypted alternative to Dropbox

#44

Post by rspoerri »

newman314 wrote: post #41
jeroenhd wrote: post #28

So, how does this compare to a solution like Bittorrent Sync? And, perhaps more interestingly, why would this become popular where BT Sync failed to live up to the hype? Furthermore, storage can be paid for by crypto. Does this mean the storage is linked to some kind of cryptocurrency, or is there some kind of central payment system that converts crypto into actual value in the system?

BTW this has now been renamed to Resilio Sync. I still use Resilio but am looking for an alternative since development seems pretty dead at this point (no updates for months).

syncthing

Re: Show HN: SlikSafe – A decentralized, end-to-end encrypted alternative to Dropbox

#45

Post by sam0x17 »

gtsop wrote: post #42

I haven't really understood how the "decentralized" comes into place. My notion of decentralization is the existence of multiple instances managed by unrelated people, such that the service keeps going if one actor falls down. From what I see here, the decentralization lies in the fact that the central service stores the data across multiple servers. So it's not technically speaking a lie, but i would say it is a bit…

Another piece of it, I think, is the lack of a central authority that can censor and/or pry into your content. With any well-implemented zero-knowledge solution, this should be the case.

Is that maybe a bit misleading? Probably, but a lot of people who search for decentralized are looking for something "off grid" in the sense of no one is watching vs "off grid" in the sense of roll your own grid.

Re: Show HN: SlikSafe – A decentralized, end-to-end encrypted alternative to Dropbox

#46

Post by sam0x17 »

bananabernhard wrote: post #33
exo762 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you really delete anything from NSA servers? Or from Internet in general? For me the problem with IPFS is - it is just not interesting enough. It's not a storage solution, it is distribution and caching mechanism. You can't really upload to IPFS, you can only publish via IPFS - the same way you publish via HTTP.

I am quite confident that the NSA does not have a complete image of the encrypted data in my self-hosted Nextcloud instance. With IPFS they wouldn't even have to do anything, if they sometime in the future were able to break the encryption.

Yeah there's actually powerpoints from the snowden leaks showing how much they ingest per month and how much of that they keep, etc.

Re: Show HN: SlikSafe – A decentralized, end-to-end encrypted alternative to Dropbox

#47

Post by sroussey »

hedora wrote: post #26
spiderice wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this problem specific to web apps? How do you prevent yourself from serving a compromised iOS/Android/Mac/Windows app? Same answer.

Well, for traditional Linux desktop apps, the distribution audits the code + ships the binaries. For app store based distribution, the developers can set up a deterministic build, and end users can verify the checksum of the package matches the developer’s published source code (signal supports this).

So the distribution is the one that alters the code and same issue.

Re: Show HN: SlikSafe – A decentralized, end-to-end encrypted alternative to Dropbox

#48

Post by arpitagarwal »

pketh wrote: post #10

seems v cool and I hope y'all are successful (although I personally prefer to pay for things with regular $s). After reading the marketing site though I'm unclear on whether decentralized storage in this context is the same as a CDN(content delivery network)?

Thanks for the support pketh! We forgot to mention on our current landing page that you can also pay with $ or your favorite currency using our Stripe integration. We'll update that on our website shortly! :)

We're using Storj and IPFS as the only storage layer behind user data, not as a CDN.

Re: Show HN: SlikSafe – A decentralized, end-to-end encrypted alternative to Dropbox

#49

Post by Comevius »

throwaway02394 wrote: post #18

Congrats on the launch! Your implementation of sharing from the whitepaper scares me. The second that the private key travels anywhere it's no longer safe in my opinion. This is why Signal uses the double ratchet and 1password has their own sharing. Unless I missed something.

The whitepaper has no details about an authenticated key exchange like Signal does with X3DH, it just assumes that it already happened, but then the rest of their protocol does not offer any post-compromise security.

Re: Show HN: SlikSafe – A decentralized, end-to-end encrypted alternative to Dropbox

#50

Post by sodality2 »

mrharrison wrote: post #22
_ea1k wrote: post #11

Isn't it impossible to really delete something from ipfs? I'd think that would make this dangerous, as any security flaw would be impossible to fix retroactively. Everything before the flaw would be compromised and can't be reencrypted safely. If a passphrase was lost, the security of every past file would be at risk. This is what has kept me from approaches like this in the past.

You can unpin it, and it will eventually be removed from other non pinned sources.

>it will eventually be removed from other non pinned sources

Hopefully, though, they unpin it.

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