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BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

torrentfreak.com

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Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#111

Post by babas »

illicium wrote: post #79
weej wrote: post #40

This is great; however, folks can still securely store data on cloud services. They just need to take a Trust No one (TNO) approach and encrypt their data to disk. For example you can use TrueCrypt and create/mount a drive volume that is fully encrypted while synced across a file share storage/sync service like DropBox. The only downside is that you have to install the TrueCrypt application on your client device, whi…

Another downside of using Truecrypt is that when you make a change in your volume, the whole volume file gets reuploaded to your storage/sync service. A better solution is to use .sparsebundles (Mac only) or something like BoxCryptor/encfs that encrypts files in the volume individually

Dropbox does not upload your whole Truecrypt volume every time you change it. It just uploads the blocks that are changed. It's pretty efficient.

The real problem with using a Truecrypt volume on Dropbox is concurrent changes to the same volume. It happens if you mount the Truecrypt volume on 2 machines at the same time. It will mess up badly.

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#112

Post by slg »

ekimekim wrote: post #108
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't yet looked to see how this service works so correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that you could solve this problem by either leaving the desktop turned on (so that it syncs immediately whenever the laptop changes), or coordinating with the IT department and having them do the same using a file server the desktop will have access to (which IT departments will like because it makes it easier to centralize ba…

This is indeed the solution. If you need the feature "needs to work without needing both computers on at the same time", add a third computer that IS always on. Might cost you a small amount of money on say EC2 or something, but probably cheaper than drop box.

That is an acceptable solution for the HN community, that is not a solution for the general public. Dropbox has reached wider success because you don't need to have an EC2 or know what one is in order to use Dropbox.

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#113

Post by MartinMond »

weej wrote: post #91
illicium wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another downside of using Truecrypt is that when you make a change in your volume, the whole volume file gets reuploaded to your storage/sync service. A better solution is to use .sparsebundles (Mac only) or something like BoxCryptor/encfs that encrypts files in the volume individually

Good point, I only use TrueCrypt for sensitive documents (small in file size), and don't worry/notice the entire volume sync. BoxCryptor does look like a great alternative; however, it's not open source and does come w/ a price (literally and figuratively - file names exposed if using free version or drop $50 USD). Have you used BoxCryptor? Curious what your experience has been. I'll give it a try.

BoxCryptor is just a commercial implementation of encfs [1] with a nice GUI (and _a lot_ less hassle to install on Windows)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encfs

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#115

Post by claudius »

weej wrote: post #40

This is great; however, folks can still securely store data on cloud services. They just need to take a Trust No one (TNO) approach and encrypt their data to disk. For example you can use TrueCrypt and create/mount a drive volume that is fully encrypted while synced across a file share storage/sync service like DropBox. The only downside is that you have to install the TrueCrypt application on your client device, whi…

git-annex also supports client-side encryption and is in the process of getting sensible syncing. I am a bit surprised it wasn’t mentioned here yet.

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#116

Post by [deleted] »

webwanderings wrote: post #71
buro9 wrote: post #9

Really nice, but the thing is... Dropbox has gone beyond just file sharing. One example: I used to use Flickr for photo sharing, but cameras got better, images got bigger, and I have a lot of photos. I moved from Flickr to Picasa as it could cope with the directories full of photos and I didn't have to manually upload them and Google's storage space was cheaper. Then I ran out of space... over 100GB of photos, where…

I pretty much agree. Correct me if I'm wrong but Dropbox were the first to have come up with Camera Upload feature, which basically makes any average user go trouble free with their cellphones, tablets, snapping away photographs knowing that they will be ready on their desktop to view if they want to. Google+ does that too now, but this is in fact a killer feature which has been adopted well by the average folks out…

[deleted]

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#117

Post by [deleted] »

webwanderings wrote: post #71
buro9 wrote: post #9

Really nice, but the thing is... Dropbox has gone beyond just file sharing. One example: I used to use Flickr for photo sharing, but cameras got better, images got bigger, and I have a lot of photos. I moved from Flickr to Picasa as it could cope with the directories full of photos and I didn't have to manually upload them and Google's storage space was cheaper. Then I ran out of space... over 100GB of photos, where…

I pretty much agree. Correct me if I'm wrong but Dropbox were the first to have come up with Camera Upload feature, which basically makes any average user go trouble free with their cellphones, tablets, snapping away photographs knowing that they will be ready on their desktop to view if they want to. Google+ does that too now, but this is in fact a killer feature which has been adopted well by the average folks out…

[deleted]

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#118

Post by taude »

buro9 wrote: post #9

Really nice, but the thing is... Dropbox has gone beyond just file sharing. One example: I used to use Flickr for photo sharing, but cameras got better, images got bigger, and I have a lot of photos. I moved from Flickr to Picasa as it could cope with the directories full of photos and I didn't have to manually upload them and Google's storage space was cheaper. Then I ran out of space... over 100GB of photos, where…

It doesn't bother you that it takes days to upload any significant number of photos with native sensor resolutions to Drop Box?

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#119

Post by __david__ »

deelowe wrote: post #101
k2enemy wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And consumers are not thinking in terms of encrypted sync, they're just thinking in terms of "I just want to do X, why is it so hard", and so I can't see this (very nice) solution really solving the problems that consumers have, that will make them prioritise security. I have a use case that is pretty common among my peer group and BT Sync has been the best solution I've been able to find. In a nutshell, I need to…

What about crashplan?

Isn't that a different use case? Crashplan creates a opaque encrypted binary blob on a remote computer which is useful for backup, but not really for syncing files around.

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#120

Post by jpalomaki »

mikeash wrote: post #54
yid wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drop a TrueCrypt partition into your Dropbox [1], and you get the Dropbox QoS as well as the encryption for your kids' swimming pool photos. Plus, for non-swimming photos, you can just use the regular Dropbox folder. [1] http://tonyonsecurity.com/2012/08/05/securing-your-data-on-d...

Does this avoid conflicts in the event that you change two different files on the TrueCrypt volume at the same time on two different computers?

I think BoxCryptor is better than TrueCrypt for this purpose. BoxCryptor encrypts each file separately so the sync works as expected.

https://www.boxcryptor.com/

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