[HN Gopher] The most secure cloud is your computer
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The most secure cloud is your computer
Author : ildon
Score : 32 points
Date : 2022-09-07 19:08 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (anita-app.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (anita-app.com)
| jeffbee wrote:
| The statement "the most secure cloud is your computer ... because
| you have full control over your computer" is false. Many, many
| people have lost control of their own computer, either physically
| through loss or theft, or virtually through malware. There is
| nothing particularly secure about the machine that happens to be
| on your desk.
| oneepic wrote:
| Fair, but... How many actors globally are trying to
| specifically break into the average person's machine and map
| out their home network, ports, services etc? How many American
| homes (or, well, citizens of other countries) have to worry
| about insiders and spies selling confidential info and stock
| tips?
|
| Maybe this is a silly way of making my point, but I just think
| the average person's home is much less of a juicy target and
| has much less of an attack surface than a cloud provider.
| (edits for wording)
| kixiQu wrote:
| > through loss
| CharlesW wrote:
| ozim wrote:
| I think some pre-configured "example projects" could make me more
| interested. Demo seems mundane, I get the idea but all the
| required fields are just annoying to get through.
| ildon wrote:
| One thing that I did not mention in the post, is that all images
| have been produced with Dall-E (https://openai.com/dall-e-2/).
|
| I must admit I'm having a lot of fun with Dall-E! I'll probably
| write a post about my experience so far with it
| [deleted]
| hprotagonist wrote:
| alas, an electromagnet in the doorframe won't help you much these
| days.
| dilippkumar wrote:
| Is this a Cryptonomicon reference?
| hprotagonist wrote:
| yes.
| _int3_ wrote:
| I think more secure way of storing data is offline backup, at
| least 2 geographic locations should be used.
| pdpi wrote:
| This is a great example of the difference between "safe" and
| "secure".
|
| Two locations is intrinsically _less_ secure, not more. You 're
| exposed to exfiltration from either site. It is, however,
| safer, because you need both sites to fail before you lose
| data.
| [deleted]
| kelnage wrote:
| But there's also a difference between "secure" and
| "confidential".
|
| Many definitions of security include integrity and
| availability as a properties to protect - and storing data in
| multiple locations can definitely help protect both of those.
| [deleted]
| rnd0 wrote:
| I never thought of it that way but it's obvious now that you
| point it out. Physical access -duh! unless you can control
| both places (eg an office and a second office), but even then
| break-ins happen.
|
| At least now I feel better about not having an "off-site
| backup" (I'm a "prosumer", not actually working in the
| feild).
| [deleted]
| MaybeItsMia wrote:
| I mean any cloud is trivial to secure if you just use strong
| encryption on anything you put on it.
| rnd0 wrote:
| Here's the deal -is there an ecryption that's actually secure
| against state-level actors? Someone with the resources of the
| FBI etc?
|
| Now, before you say "I don't do anything illegal so it doesn't
| matter, I'm only worried about corporations" think for a minute
| about how often companies _do_ have ties (even informal ones
| -like friends) with people who work in agencies with those
| resources. You still run the very real and likely risk of a
| quid-pro-quo ( "hey, if you can give us a way to peek into
| these encrypted drives we'll leave the listings out for you
| /wink").
|
| In the year of Our Lord 2022 I really would not trust cloud
| encryption -strong or otherwise; at least not for me personally
| and my personal/hobby data. If I was working for a company that
| has a legal department with teeth behind me and I was storing
| things on the cloud for them? That would be a different
| ballgame.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > Here's the deal -is there an ecryption that's actually
| secure against state-level actors? Someone with the resources
| of the FBI etc?
|
| Yes. AES-256.
|
| One-Time Pads as well, but of course then you have the
| problem of how to securely store the pad.
| newpavlov wrote:
| >is there an ecryption that's actually secure against state-
| level actors
|
| Any modern symmetric encryption is extremely likely to be
| safe against state-level actors for the observable future
| assuming your encryption key is not compromised and has
| enough entropy in it. Even with quantum computers you only
| need twice longer keys. Roughly, AES-256 would provide
| AES-128 level of security in the presence of practical
| quantum computers.
|
| If you feel especially paranoid about potential backdoors in
| algorithms, you can chain several algorithms from different
| organizations (e.g. AES, Kuznyechik, ChaCha20, and SM4)
| initialized with different keys. Though such practice is
| frowned upon by cryptographers.
| ShredKazoo wrote:
| michaelwww wrote:
| > you can even choose to store it on an external drive
|
| I can already to that. Why do I need Anita?
| ildon wrote:
| With most web based apps usually the user is pretty locked in.
| Anita tries to bridge the gap between installable and non-
| installable apps.
| michaelwww wrote:
| I read it again and it seems like I make my computer a cloud
| that I can access anywhere
| yosito wrote:
| I had to go to the homepage of this site to get a clear idea of
| what Anita does, and what the nonsense in this article was
| talking about. Anita is a web app that is something between a
| notes app and a password manager. This article is talking about
| how you can store your Anita database locally, even though it's a
| web app. It really has nothing to do with a cloud at all in the
| technical sense, but I could see how the fact that the app runs
| in a browser might be perceived as "cloud-like" by people with no
| technical understanding.
| ildon wrote:
| I'm still working on the landing page, but you did get a rather
| good idea of what the app does. Essentially you can store in it
| any information, organized as you whish. The article is indeed
| meant for very non tech savvy readers, that's why it's overly
| simplified. It is meant as a more in depth analysis of the
| "Secure" card on the landing.
| anon291 wrote:
| I run a few services (don't quite break even), and host my own
| blog, etc. I used to use AWS. However, I would spend almost
| $200/month.
|
| So instead I now rent $200 of colo space from a data center. That
| gives me 5U of space per month. I bought my own servers. I can
| now host way more for absolutely no more marginal cost. Working
| on adding GPU instances for some AI projects.
|
| So the most secure cloud for me is my own cloud.
|
| I wish there was a service where I could purchase a computer that
| I never see from a company who I then pay rent to host in their
| data center. The computer is mine, and there is a strict contract
| indicating entry into / out of the cubby it's in.
|
| For example, my data center won't open my cabinet unless I
| request it and there is a strict set of law as to what they can
| and cannot do with it.
|
| Moreover, unlike AWS, they cannot 'terminate' my account. While
| they can stop the lease... the computer is my own and the
| contract specifies that I have X many days to remove it.
|
| That would be true ownership. The idea that amazon can shut down
| an app in one day is what made me leave AWS for good.
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| This is basically colocation.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colocation_centre
| anon291 wrote:
| Yes exactly, but instead of having to find a server, order it
| and ship it. the colo center also acts as a vendor of pre-
| built servers.
|
| So instead of Amazon keeping thousands of servers ready for
| you to rent at any time, I'd keep servers ready for you to
| _buy_ at anytime.
|
| You pay $4000 say for the server. Now you own it. Then you
| pay me $100 / month.
|
| We depreciate the server. If after three months you think
| you're done, we give you $3800 back. So your cost was
| $200/month. Same as AWS, except you own the server. Also,
| better for your taxes, because unlike cloud services, actual
| hardware depreciation is a tax loss.
|
| Since you own the server at all times, and are just renting
| from me for the actual connection, you can decide to simply
| remove the server at any time (and then I keep the $4000,
| like a normal purchase). Or, if I decide I disagree with what
| you're hosting, I will pull the plug, but the server is
| yours.
|
| Unlike amazon, since you own the server, I cannot seize it
| and terminate your data, as Amazon did with Parler, for
| example.
|
| Moreover, unlike Amazon, the government cannot 'request' that
| they see what's on my disks or server. The government
| actually cannot compel me to turn over any incriminating data
| (fifth amendment) about myself, whereas they can compel
| Amazon to.
|
| This arrangement gives you the same kinds of rights you get
| as a tenant in a normal rental situation, rather than the
| 'big multinational conglomerate owns everything' situation we
| have no.
| intelVISA wrote:
| I could be wrong but some colo places offer this as it's
| not super uncommon.
| harvey9 wrote:
| "Moreover, unlike Amazon, the government cannot 'request'
| that they see what's on my disks or server. "
|
| Can you clarify, are these the customer's disks at this
| point?
| anon291 wrote:
| Yes, you bought a server from me and are renting space to
| keep it in my facilities. Just because the seller and
| renter are the same doesn't mean the disks aren't yours.
| Whereas, on Amazon I don't own the disks S3 is on.
| ildon wrote:
| Yes! The essence of my piece was precisely this. The obvious
| downside is that the average user can't/won't fiddle with all
| the intricacies of setting up and maintaining a server. My
| dream goal is to provide a piece of software that gives users
| the ability to bypass the need of a server, while not relying
| on "third party clouds". That's why I preferred to use the word
| "computer" instead of server :-)
| kixiQu wrote:
| it might be the "most secure", but if you could see the amount of
| lint that's built up inside computer cases in my home, you
| couldn't call it the _safest_
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(page generated 2022-09-07 23:02 UTC)