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Interview with CEO of rsync.net: “no firewalls and no routers”

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Re: Interview with CEO of rsync.net: “no firewalls and no routers”

#51

Post by dividuum »

frammie wrote: post #35
dharmab wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used rsync.net in the past- it's essentially "filesystem as a service." You, the customer, use it to back your own software that handles the encryption and replication. Their website has some how-to guides for some common software, or you can roll your own with the rsync protocol. Notably, their website only claims transfer encryption, not encryption at rest. You can of course encrypt your files yourself with yo…

Not having data encrypted by default is concerning, however I do admire the simplistic approach of handling your own dataflow and tools for sure.

> Not having data encrypted by default is concerning[..]

While I agree in general, I think rsync's case is special: Unless the file encryption on their side is somehow derived from the SSH connection (so the files are only readable by your connection and while you're connected - is such a thing possible?), it would mean that they have to store the encryption keys somewhere. The far better approach is to treat them as completely untrusted and only store content you locally encrypt before sending it over. That way you don't have to care about them encrypting your data, it's completely in your control. I use restic for that. Works great.

Re: Interview with CEO of rsync.net: “no firewalls and no routers”

#52

Post by Alupis »

rsync wrote: post #30
Alupis wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have trouble understanding why people go through these hoops. Yeah, I get it, people love their Mac's... but the company that produces them actively undermines your ability to continue using perfectly good hardware past what they feel is "profitable". This leads to huge efforts to hack/reverse the updaters, or alter newer OS versions to trick them into installing, etc. I'd personally jump over to some system that d…

I agree with this. It's why a hackintosh has never appealed to me. However, in this case , the tweak I needed to do to the mac pro was so trivial as to be (essentially) cost-free. No need to alter the installer, etc. It pleases me to be (re)using this machine for over 12 years now - especially given what a triumph of workstation design these mac pros were ...

My last personal desktop was about 11 years old when I retired it. It had an AMD Phenom II 965, just to emphasize it's age.

It started life with Windows 7 (Win7 was like a month old at the time) and was subsequently upgraded to Windows 8, then Windows 8.1, then finally Windows 10 (and all it's "feature" updates) until it was retired. It ran slower than a new system, but fit my needs perfectly.

If Microsoft had arbitrarily decided I wasn't allowed to run Windows 10 on that hardware, it's very likely I would have installed Linux or BSD - after all, the hardware was a non-trivial investment and discarding it purely to please some company really rubs me the wrong way.

So, I guess I can sort of understand why people jump through these hoops... although personally I would just move onto some other OS that doesn't undermine my ability to operate my personal computer.

Re: Interview with CEO of rsync.net: “no firewalls and no routers”

#53

Post by rsync »

korethr wrote: post #48

I wonder if they have any sales to large enterprises or similar institutions. In my experience, the larger organizations will have a "security" questionnaire required of their vendors, and the person administering it is a droid, incapable of evaluating whether the questions, originally written in the mid-00s and only updated for buzzword compliance since, are applicable to modern security practice today, or to the pa…

"I wonder if they have any sales to large enterprises or similar institutions."

Yes, certainly.

We frequently fill out very detailed checklists and questionnaires related to our quality policy, standards, internal policies, etc.

We're also very honest about how we approach these issues:

https://www.rsync.net/resources/regulatory/pci.html

... and they generally appreciate the honesty.

Re: Interview with CEO of rsync.net: “no firewalls and no routers”

#54

Post by canoebuilder »

With regard to the iOS import/export mentioned, does anyone have any more recommendations? (I'm not familiar with the mentioned option, nothing against it, just seeking out all options)

Simple file system interface to all devices first, then any further software interfaces on top only if desired.

Thanks for making the option available for remote storage John!

Re: Interview with CEO of rsync.net: “no firewalls and no routers”

#55

Post by noir_lord »

dividuum wrote: post #51
frammie wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not having data encrypted by default is concerning, however I do admire the simplistic approach of handling your own dataflow and tools for sure.

> Not having data encrypted by default is concerning[..] While I agree in general, I think rsync's case is special: Unless the file encryption on their side is somehow derived from the SSH connection (so the files are only readable by your connection and while you're connected - is such a thing possible?), it would mean that they have to store the encryption keys somewhere. The far better approach is to treat them as…

Agreed - They can't be compelled to give up what they never had and it means as a user you can control exactly how your content is encrypted.

Re: Interview with CEO of rsync.net: “no firewalls and no routers”

#56

Post by sideshowmel »

Jonnax wrote: post #49
sideshowmel wrote: post #39

Don't know if running a dumb switch connected to your ISP is the best infosec policy: https://blogs.cisco.com/manufacturing/the-top-5-reasons-to-a...

I'm not sure those reasons really apply to their case. Especially since they're running the boxes that it's connected to. They can do resiliency, network segmentation, and monitoring on their platform. What's a Cisco box going to do for them?

Dumb switches will blast packets to all interfaces that are connected. If there's a machine on the switch that's in promiscuous mode, it can see all the packets on the local network (including the backups coming in from customers).

Managed switches typically have ACL support. I get the KISS principle, but this setup seems to be trading security for simplicity.

Re: Interview with CEO of rsync.net: “no firewalls and no routers”

#57

Post by Alupis »

ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote: post #31
Alupis wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have trouble understanding why people go through these hoops. Yeah, I get it, people love their Mac's... but the company that produces them actively undermines your ability to continue using perfectly good hardware past what they feel is "profitable". This leads to huge efforts to hack/reverse the updaters, or alter newer OS versions to trick them into installing, etc. I'd personally jump over to some system that d…

Linux just isn't plug and play enough yet to make the switch less painful than dealing with the pain-points created by anti-consumer practices by Apple and Microsoft on MacOS and Windows, even for technically literate people. I made the switch a year ago after having reached my breaking point with Windows and it still was a massive pain and daily loss of performance. For comparison, I also rooted my Android phone and…

Fair criticisms. We're still waiting for the fabled "year of the linux desktop".

Although, I feel the specific issues you raise are less of a problem on a desktop-focused distro like Ubuntu or Linux Mint. Those distros really focus on a complete desktop experience, and really try to never require a user to drop into a shell to get anything done. So, perhaps it's a case of people using the "wrong" distro for their needs?

Re: Interview with CEO of rsync.net: “no firewalls and no routers”

#58

Post by bflesch »

Big fan of rsync.net but the firewall comment caught me a bit off-guard. The benefit of a firewall is that it's an isolated system which - apart from port blocking - guarantees a certain level of traffic logging and known-good state.

If you have everything on one host I'd say your overall setup on that host becomes much more complex because you only need to get hit by one successful exploit chain and all logs on that host cannot be trusted any more.

Re: Interview with CEO of rsync.net: “no firewalls and no routers”

#59

Post by bluedino »

Aeolos wrote: post #7

> "I have a early-2009 “octo” Mac Pro [...]" > > OS: macOS Does this make anyone else a bit uncomfortable? I don't think MacOS is still receiving security updates on that hardware. I'm all for using old hardware for as long as it keeps working, but I would never browse the internet with a vulnerable OS on a vulnerable processor (spectre etc...) Or am I missing something?

>> I would never browse the internet with a vulnerable OS on a vulnerable processor (spectre etc...)

You might be paranoid. I've been browsing on a few 2008/2009 obsolete Macs for a while, on the highest OS that they will run.

Eventually they'll be a pain to use because of browser incompatibility, pages will get even more bloated and these machines will run them even slower.

Re: Interview with CEO of rsync.net: “no firewalls and no routers”

#60

Post by noir_lord »

rsync wrote: post #30
Alupis wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have trouble understanding why people go through these hoops. Yeah, I get it, people love their Mac's... but the company that produces them actively undermines your ability to continue using perfectly good hardware past what they feel is "profitable". This leads to huge efforts to hack/reverse the updaters, or alter newer OS versions to trick them into installing, etc. I'd personally jump over to some system that d…

I agree with this. It's why a hackintosh has never appealed to me. However, in this case , the tweak I needed to do to the mac pro was so trivial as to be (essentially) cost-free. No need to alter the installer, etc. It pleases me to be (re)using this machine for over 12 years now - especially given what a triumph of workstation design these mac pros were ...

I like to get that kind of use out of my machines though I upgrade workstation on a more regular basis (though the last one went a full 7 years with nothing new but a RAM upgrade and an SSD midlife) - You come to identify with the hardware after a while, it takes on a life of it's own.

Since I'm (excluding Win10 for gaming when I rarely have time) exclusively a Linux user I get to use the old hardware for other purposes at the end until it finally becomes either useless or lets out the magic smoke (as my 2004 R50e Thinkpad finally did - man I miss those keyboards, so much better than the T470P (which itself is excellent)).

It paid of just recently, I had 2012 Vostro 3750 kicking around and when schools went into lockdown with a quick wipe and Fedora install it made a perfectly serviceable machine for my step-son to do his remote learning on - there was an irony in running MS Teams on Linux on a machine that wouldn't have been able to run current generation Windows 10 and Teams anywhere near as comfortably.

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