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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

#171

Post by mtgx »

qiemem wrote: post #34
mrcharles wrote: post #26

Can someone give me a quick rundown on how this works, vs security of files? If it's using the bittorrent protocol, wouldn't that mean that all your files, even though encrypted, are easily gathered by a third party? Or does this simply make direct connections between PCs you own and people you have authorized to share your files?

From the article: > While Sync uses BitTorrent technology, people’s files are not accessible to outsiders. Only those who have the unique private key can access the shared folder. > > “All the traffic is encrypted using a private key derived from the shared secret. Your files can be viewed and received only by the people with whom you share your private secret,” BitTorrent explains.

Security wise, is this that different from just making a private torrent yourself and giving it to someone you know?

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#172

Post by yurisagalov »

ritonlajoie wrote: post #2

What are the differences with AeroFS ?

I believe the use cases are different, which drives a difference in at least the user experience. AeroFS is designed for business use, so we strive to balance simplicity in UI/UX with security/privacy while trying to avoid things like side-channel sharing of secrets. We focus on functionality like managing your team, the ability to remotely wipe devices, control sharing within your organization, and so on, while providing the "Dropbox experience" that end users within the organization ask for, and without us storing any of the data itself.

I agree that the main gripe with AeroFS that people have voiced in this thread is certainly valid. AeroFS _did_ slow down in performance for some users recently. We actually just released a version today that addresses this bug (0.4.181 - see http://ae.ro/Ln2YJJ for the release notes, but it specifically had to do with the way we were initializing our jingle library), and in our own internal tests the performance has improved dramatically.

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#173

Post by ephoz »

Angostura wrote: post #155

Is this the first time that a product has been launched with the primary motivation of showing that a particular protocol is good for things other illegal filesharing? Up until now BitTorrent aficionados have tended to be forced back to the "I use it for Linux distros" when defending the protocol against ISPs and businesses looking to shape or block BT traffic. If this takes off, then the "its only used for nefarious…

Many gamers are using BitTorrent through Valve's Steam. By which I mean, that p2p file sharing is hardly nefarious. It's just a clever use of bandwidth.

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#174

Post by AllTheThings »

Angostura wrote: post #155

Is this the first time that a product has been launched with the primary motivation of showing that a particular protocol is good for things other illegal filesharing? Up until now BitTorrent aficionados have tended to be forced back to the "I use it for Linux distros" when defending the protocol against ISPs and businesses looking to shape or block BT traffic. If this takes off, then the "its only used for nefarious…

That's an interesting way of looking at things, but I think Sync has a long way to go before it becomes a textbook case for BitTorrent advocates to point to productive usage. I think that supporting anonymous, distributed protocols like BitTorrent should be our prerogative as proponents of a free society.

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#175

Post by pspeter3 »

k0ban wrote: post #140
stephengillie wrote: post #123

So this will run on RasPi? It seems like the next step is for someone to attach a NAS to a RasPi and make a "syncbox" -- a NAS which auto-syncs to the other NASes you've configured across the internet. For end users, they would get 2 and share a secret between them, then install one at 2 separate offices (or home and office), and any files dumped onto one NAS are replicated to the other. Basically Dropbox without fil…

It does.

Awesome, that was actually my first thought upon seeing this

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#176

Post by nessus42 »

k2enemy wrote: post #98
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…

> 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…

For the reasons that you've specified and others, I rolled my own very simple sync system based on Git.

The biggest problem I personally have with Dropbbox et. al, is that none of the commercial solutions sync symbolic links opaquely. ("Opaque" syncing of symlinks means to sync the links themselves and not what the symlinks link to.) I use symlinks heavily and so I absolutely require this feature. Most of the commercial solutions just ignore symlinks, but Dropbox does the worst thing possible and treats symlinks transparently. This is utterly wrong and, in fact, downright dangerous!

Another feature that I need for telecommuting software development is to be able to exclude artifacts from what is synced. Eclipse, for instance, constantly churns out artifacts, and I certainly don't want or need those artifacts to be synced.

Two problems with my roll-your-own little syncing system remain: (1) The large file issue that you mentioned. (Sparkleshare is much worse in this regard than my system, last I tried.) (2) I know of no way to have the Git instance that I use for syncing not pay attention to the .gitignore files that are used by the Git instance that I use for version control. Annoying!

In any case, I'm very glad to hear that BitTorrent seems to be coming up with a solution that will address all my issues, and I won't have to roll my own anymore.

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#178

Post by javanix »

ephoz wrote: post #173
Angostura wrote: post #155

Is this the first time that a product has been launched with the primary motivation of showing that a particular protocol is good for things other illegal filesharing? Up until now BitTorrent aficionados have tended to be forced back to the "I use it for Linux distros" when defending the protocol against ISPs and businesses looking to shape or block BT traffic. If this takes off, then the "its only used for nefarious…

Many gamers are using BitTorrent through Valve's Steam. By which I mean, that p2p file sharing is hardly nefarious. It's just a clever use of bandwidth.

Is Steam actually using BitTorrent? I thought they were using something proprietary.

If they are not using BitTorrent then Sync would provide a new, plausible way to stop ISPs from blocking that specific protocol.

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#179

Post by tsycho »

Terretta wrote: post #132
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 used to use Flickr for photo sharing, but cameras got better, images got bigger, and I have a lot of photos. Why is this a problem with Flickr? I am generally shooting high res full frame, and post to Flickr. I have about a terabyte of images. There's no 100GB storage limit, just an annual flat fee. Family can download full resolution images for printing. My grandmother can have my Flickr Photo Stream as a screen…

I am using Everpix at the moment, but Flickr seems like a better deal and has much more features. Except for a critical one....auto-uploading from pre-specified folders & Photo Stream. Do you manually upload all your photos, or is there a better way?

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#180

Post by pkulak »

lifeformed wrote: post #47
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…

Nice bike.

That hub gear is worth nearly twice what I paid for my bike. And I think I paid a lot for my bike.

Good to know Dropbox can host some of the steamiest bike porn I've ever seen.

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