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Keybase launches encrypted Git

keybase.io

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Re: Keybase launches encrypted Git

#61

Post by mikeash »

eropple wrote: post #34
mikeash wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That explains the confusion, I'm talking about keeping a bare repository in Dropbox and cloning it to a non-Dropbox location on each computer where I work. It never occurred to me to keep the working copy itself on DB, that would be silly! I expect that this could break the bare repository on DB if I ever pushed from two places simultaneously (where "simultaneously" could potentially encompass a period of hours or da…

For sure--I'm going to go poke at the Keybase one this afternoon! (Also, to be clear, the Keybase method is essentially the same as git-remote-dropbox. Both set up git remote helpers.)

It took me about two seconds to create a new repository with Keybase and clone it to my computer, so I'm pretty impressed so far.

Thanks for the info about git-remote-dropbox and the potential failure modes of going without, even if they don't all apply to the way I've been doing things. It's still not ideal, so here's hoping Keybase makes it obsolete. If not, I'll keep git-remote-dropbox in mind.

Re: Keybase launches encrypted Git

#62

Post by EGreg »

acobster wrote: post #51
malgorithms wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We believe the right long-term answer for Keybase is finding a way to charge large corporations and offer pretty much everything else for free. Obviously there would have to be some paid tier if you really wanted 10TB of storage or something, but very few people want that right now. We're still just getting started. Of course to achieve our goal, we'll also have to find a way to distinguish communities - which we'll…

This is a fantastic answer, and I wish more folks were this dedicated to making sure they have something great before trying to hawk it. That said, I do wish I could pay for (at least) a TB of Keybase storage right now. :D

David Heinemeier Hansson and the Basecamp guys would disagree :)

Re: Keybase launches encrypted Git

#63

Post by 1123581321 »

EGreg wrote: post #62
acobster wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a fantastic answer, and I wish more folks were this dedicated to making sure they have something great before trying to hawk it. That said, I do wish I could pay for (at least) a TB of Keybase storage right now. :D

David Heinemeier Hansson and the Basecamp guys would disagree :)

I think Keybase is more like what Joel Spolsky describes as a "horizontal company" that's appropriate to try to build after already having made money. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2012/01/06/how-trello-is-diff...

Re: Keybase launches encrypted Git

#64

Post by hannob »

malgorithms wrote: post #2

Keybase team member here. Interesting fact: git doesn't check the validity of sha-1 hashes in your commit history. Meaning if someone compromises your hosted origin, they can quietly compromise your history. So even the fears about data leaks aside, this is a big win for safety. From an entrepreneurial perspective, this is my favorite thing we've done at Keybase. It pushes all the buttons: (1) it's relatively simple,…

> Keybase team member here. Interesting fact: git doesn't check the validity of sha-1 hashes in your commit history.

I heard this a couple of times and tried to confirm it a while ago, but was unable to. I wasn't able to forge a repository with faulty hashes in it. I also heard plenty of people tell me that there exist public repositories with wrong hashes in them, but when I asked them they never could come up with concrete examples in the wild.

I'm seriously curious about this, can you provide any clonable proof of concept repository with wrong hashes?

Re: Keybase launches encrypted Git

#65

Post by simonbyrne »

hannob wrote: post #64
malgorithms wrote: post #2

Keybase team member here. Interesting fact: git doesn't check the validity of sha-1 hashes in your commit history. Meaning if someone compromises your hosted origin, they can quietly compromise your history. So even the fears about data leaks aside, this is a big win for safety. From an entrepreneurial perspective, this is my favorite thing we've done at Keybase. It pushes all the buttons: (1) it's relatively simple,…

> Keybase team member here. Interesting fact: git doesn't check the validity of sha-1 hashes in your commit history. I heard this a couple of times and tried to confirm it a while ago, but was unable to. I wasn't able to forge a repository with faulty hashes in it. I also heard plenty of people tell me that there exist public repositories with wrong hashes in them, but when I asked them they never could come up with…

Likewise, I would be keen to see an example of this.

Re: Keybase launches encrypted Git

#66

Post by r0ze-at-hn »

sb8244 wrote: post #49
r0ze-at-hn wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many of us on the team have come from ad-supported businesses and we really, really never want to do that again. I personally guarantee I will never be a "publisher" again. So prove it. Provide a way that customers can try to give you money for solving their problems. Even if it is just a dummy static page with a form to contact your "sales" department, really show that you will be here for the longer term.

Putting up a fake sales page isn't a sales strategy and wouldn't prove anything. If anything, it could add to the distraction. Sales and being around long term are more complicated and won't simply be proven to you because it's what you want. It requires more vision and coherence than that.

It doesn't have to be a fake page, talking about a mvp where they can gauge who is interested in paying and what their problems are so they can concentrate in those areas. When confident they could even setup a simple paypal re-occuring sale system too.

Re: Keybase launches encrypted Git

#67

Post by drudru11 »

malgorithms wrote: post #2

Keybase team member here. Interesting fact: git doesn't check the validity of sha-1 hashes in your commit history. Meaning if someone compromises your hosted origin, they can quietly compromise your history. So even the fears about data leaks aside, this is a big win for safety. From an entrepreneurial perspective, this is my favorite thing we've done at Keybase. It pushes all the buttons: (1) it's relatively simple,…

Thanks for making this - this is the first keybase product that I've gotten really excited about!

Re: Keybase launches encrypted Git

#68

Post by eslaught »

zeroxfe wrote: post #6

I'm really happy about this. I have private repos for personal information (e.g., tax spreadsheets going back a decade) that I keep synchronized across machines, and have to jump through hoops to get an encrypted authoritative remote source. Right now I do that with an encrypted partition on a private VM. And, it really sucks that GitHub does not encrypt data at rest: --- SNIP from https://help.github.com/articles/gi…

It certainly depends on the threat model, but in this case I have to agree with Github---adding at-rest encryption would be unlikely to make their product significantly more secure, and it would certainly be nowhere as secure as Keybase.

With Keybase, the data is encrypted on the client, and the keys stay on the client. Assuming the crypto is done right, there is fundamentally no way for Keybase to read the data, and therefore no way for an attacker to get the data by way of compromising Keybase. The only way for an attacker to get the data is by compromising the client machine, which is a very different threat model.

With the model you're proposing for Github, the data would be encrypted for transfer (via HTTPS or SSH), but then it would be immediately decrypted again on the server. Even if it is encrypted again before it's put onto the disk, fundamentally the key lives on the server (and has to in order to provide Github's feature set) and so an attacker who had compromised the machine would simply grab the key before going after the files on disk. The actual additional security you get is really not that significant.

Personally, I appreciate Github's stance on this. There have been a number of "secure" products (see e.g. Lavabit) that have really been snakeoil because they used the approach above. I'll take honesty over false promises any day---at least with the former, I understand my risk and can take steps to mitigate appropriately.

Re: Keybase launches encrypted Git

#70

Post by r0ze-at-hn »

1123581321 wrote: post #63
EGreg wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

David Heinemeier Hansson and the Basecamp guys would disagree :)

I think Keybase is more like what Joel Spolsky describes as a "horizontal company" that's appropriate to try to build after already having made money. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2012/01/06/how-trello-is-diff...

From Joel's article:

> That means that our highest priority is removing any obstacles to adoption. Anything that people might use as a reason not to use Trello has to be found and eliminated.

In this case I am weary of using something like this that is free because I have seen so many things in the past that were free only to shutdown rapidly after they grew in size, but with no way to pay for themselves and had to pivot or sell out. So being free is actually an obstacle in adoption.

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