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DigitalOcean - Transparency Regarding Data Security

digitalocean.com

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Re: DigitalOcean - Transparency Regarding Data Security

#3

Post by rgbrenner »

At no time was customer data "leaked" between accounts. This would require that a user not scrub their volume after destroying their server; in this instance data would be recoverable and should be considered not sensitive.

Is it just me, or is this contradictory? "Data wasn't leaked.. but if it was it was because you didn't check scrub, so it must not have been important." These are two completely different things. Even if the data was not sensitive, it could still be leaked between accounts (which is what happened here).

Kudos for committing to fixing the problem though.

Re: DigitalOcean - Transparency Regarding Data Security

#7

Post by diminoten »

rgbrenner wrote: post #3

At no time was customer data "leaked" between accounts. This would require that a user not scrub their volume after destroying their server; in this instance data would be recoverable and should be considered not sensitive. Is it just me, or is this contradictory? "Data wasn't leaked.. but if it was it was because you didn't check scrub, so it must not have been important." These are two completely different things.…

A lot of the talk was theoretical and the examples run were I think all within a user's own space.

If not though, then you're absolutely right that those are contradictory. If, even during disclosure, one user's data was made available to another user, that constitutes a data leak.

Re: DigitalOcean - Transparency Regarding Data Security

#8

Post by mmmooo »

diminoten wrote: post #5

I've seen the TRIM recommendation pop up a few times, and never with a reply from DO - is this probably how they're going to handle this, or is there a possible reason for not using TRIM?

its more about zero after trim support (dzat), and sounds like they maybe use ssd's that don't support it, and are handling it by zeroing the block device on create instead of wipe. At least that's how I read it. I suppose easy enough to check by seeing if new droplets take longer to create after this is deployed.

Re: DigitalOcean - Transparency Regarding Data Security

#9

Post by rgbrenner »

diminoten wrote: post #5

I've seen the TRIM recommendation pop up a few times, and never with a reply from DO - is this probably how they're going to handle this, or is there a possible reason for not using TRIM?

TRIM is equivalent to 'mark as free'. there's no guarantee it will zero the data, and whether it is zero'd depends on the manufacturer/model of the drive.

If that's how they implement it, then I look forward to reading their future security advisory.

Re: DigitalOcean - Transparency Regarding Data Security

#10

Post by rgbrenner »

diminoten wrote: post #7
rgbrenner wrote: post #3

At no time was customer data "leaked" between accounts. This would require that a user not scrub their volume after destroying their server; in this instance data would be recoverable and should be considered not sensitive. Is it just me, or is this contradictory? "Data wasn't leaked.. but if it was it was because you didn't check scrub, so it must not have been important." These are two completely different things.…

A lot of the talk was theoretical and the examples run were I think all within a user's own space. If not though, then you're absolutely right that those are contradictory. If, even during disclosure, one user's data was made available to another user, that constitutes a data leak.

https://github.com/fog/fog/issues/2525

https://f.cloud.github.com/assets/408977/1820859/8658298e-71...

  These are some of the strings I pulled off the root blockdev 
  - I have no such /var/deploy/chegou, or any of these files. I was
  able to recover someone else's webserver logs from yesterday, as well.
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