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The most secure cloud is your computer

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31–40 of 53 posts

Re: The most secure cloud is your computer

#32
post #29
post #25

The statement "the most secure cloud is your computer ... because you have full control over your computer" is false. Many, many people have lost control of their own computer, either physically through loss or theft, or virtually through malware. There is nothing particularly secure about the machine that happens to be on your desk.

Fair, but... How many actors globally are trying to specifically break into the average person's machine and map out their home network, ports, services etc? How many American homes (or, well, citizens of other countries) have to worry about insiders and spies selling confidential info and stock tips? Maybe this is a silly way of making my point, but I just think the average person's home is much less of a juicy targ…

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Re: The most secure cloud is your computer

#34
post #29
post #25

The statement "the most secure cloud is your computer ... because you have full control over your computer" is false. Many, many people have lost control of their own computer, either physically through loss or theft, or virtually through malware. There is nothing particularly secure about the machine that happens to be on your desk.

Fair, but... How many actors globally are trying to specifically break into the average person's machine and map out their home network, ports, services etc? How many American homes (or, well, citizens of other countries) have to worry about insiders and spies selling confidential info and stock tips? Maybe this is a silly way of making my point, but I just think the average person's home is much less of a juicy targ…

> through loss

Re: The most secure cloud is your computer

#35
post #17
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes exactly, but instead of having to find a server, order it and ship it. the colo center also acts as a vendor of pre-built servers. So instead of Amazon keeping thousands of servers ready for you to rent at any time, I'd keep servers ready for you to buy at anytime. You pay $4000 say for the server. Now you own it. Then you pay me $100 / month. We depreciate the server. If after three months you think you're done,…

"Moreover, unlike Amazon, the government cannot 'request' that they see what's on my disks or server. " Can you clarify, are these the customer's disks at this point?

Yes, you bought a server from me and are renting space to keep it in my facilities. Just because the seller and renter are the same doesn't mean the disks aren't yours. Whereas, on Amazon I don't own the disks S3 is on.

Re: The most secure cloud is your computer

#36
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the deal -is there an ecryption that's actually secure against state-level actors? Someone with the resources of the FBI etc? Now, before you say "I don't do anything illegal so it doesn't matter, I'm only worried about corporations" think for a minute about how often companies do have ties (even informal ones -like friends) with people who work in agencies with those resources. You still run the very real and…

>is there an ecryption that's actually secure against state-level actors Any modern symmetric encryption is extremely likely to be safe against state-level actors for the observable future assuming your encryption key is not compromised and has enough entropy in it. Even with quantum computers you only need twice longer keys. Roughly, AES-256 would provide AES-128 level of security in the presence of practical quantu…

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Re: The most secure cloud is your computer

#38
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the deal -is there an ecryption that's actually secure against state-level actors? Someone with the resources of the FBI etc? Now, before you say "I don't do anything illegal so it doesn't matter, I'm only worried about corporations" think for a minute about how often companies do have ties (even informal ones -like friends) with people who work in agencies with those resources. You still run the very real and…

> Here's the deal -is there an ecryption that's actually secure against state-level actors? Someone with the resources of the FBI etc? Yes. AES-256. One-Time Pads as well, but of course then you have the problem of how to securely store the pad.

For now

Re: The most secure cloud is your computer

#39
post #28
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great example of the difference between "safe" and "secure". Two locations is intrinsically less secure, not more. You're exposed to exfiltration from either site. It is, however, safer, because you need both sites to fail before you lose data.

But there’s also a difference between “secure” and “confidential”. Many definitions of security include integrity and availability as a properties to protect - and storing data in multiple locations can definitely help protect both of those.

Yeah, agreed.

If you think of safety as defence against accidents and security as defence against attacks, there's a large natural overlap simply because "deliberately cause an accident" is the most obvious family of strategies for an attacker.

That said, this distinction between safety and security, between accident and attack, often gets lost in this sort of discussion, and for this particular thread, highlighting the difference, and how the two are sometimes at odds with each other, was more important than highlighting the overlap.

Re: The most secure cloud is your computer

#40
> When it comes to data storage, security is a big concern. No matter what information you store, you want to make sure that it is safe and secure. Even trivial information is now worth a lot of money, and it is used to profile users. So you want to make sure that your data is safe

Tracking and profiling is rarely what people mean by data safety and usually instead refer to privacy. Privacy != safety. Beyond that, it doesn’t explain why you might want to keep your “data” safe from profiling. Most profiling is done on data that you can’t “own”. Eg. Facebook tracks you through tracking pixels and behavioral monitoring, and there’s no way to “own” that data - it’s never given to you the way your footprints on the beach are never yours.

I worry that lay-people without a technical understanding of things understand enough to see through the BS scare marketing tactics but not enough to understand that data security is important AND data privacy is important - for different reasons than usually mentioned.

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