[HN Gopher] End-to-End Encrypted Cloud Storage in the Wild: A Br...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       End-to-End Encrypted Cloud Storage in the Wild: A Broken Ecosystem
        
       Author : dogtype
       Score  : 71 points
       Date   : 2024-10-10 13:00 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (brokencloudstorage.info)
 (TXT) w3m dump (brokencloudstorage.info)
        
       | java-man wrote:
       | I want to see the response from sync.com on this, especially
       | about                 Unauthenticated Key Material
       | Unauthenticated Public Keys
       | 
       | attacks.
        
       | iknowstuff wrote:
       | curious about iCloud with Advanced Data Protection enabled
        
         | MichaelZuo wrote:
         | Considering iCloud does have some documented cases of silent
         | corruption, such as of original resolution media stored in
         | Photos, it might not be the best choice.
        
       | megous wrote:
       | That was a good skim for me as someone who implemented one of the
       | first independent mega.nz clients. Useful to know especially
       | about structure authentication and ability to swap metadata on
       | files and move files/chunks of files around when server is
       | compromised, when there's no e2e authentication for this. Lots of
       | traps all around. :)
       | 
       | Looks like the safest bet is still to just tar everything and
       | encrypt/sign the result in one go.
       | 
       | I wonder how vulnerable eg. Linux filesystem level encryption is
       | to these kinds of attacks...
        
       | cobbzilla wrote:
       | The sad state of E2E encryption for cloud storage is a big part
       | of why I wrote mobiletto [1]. It supports transparent client-side
       | encryption for S3, B2, local storage and more. Rekeying is easy-
       | set up a new volume, mirror to it, then remove old volume.
       | 
       | [1] https://github.com/cobbzilla/mobiletto
        
       | fguerraz wrote:
       | It's too bad they focused on commercial closed-source solutions
       | providers. The ecosystem would have really benefited if they had
       | put their efforts to, for example, do the same work with
       | NextCloud.
        
         | kientuong114 wrote:
         | NextCloud has already been analyzed by some great people
         | (https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/546).
        
       | triyambakam wrote:
       | Hmm, I wish the author had reviewed Proton. I think it's kind of
       | seen as a meme here? But I heavily rely on it and generally the
       | Proton ecosystem is getting better and better from a UX
       | perspective
        
         | canadiantim wrote:
         | I think Proton is more viewed as a honeypot
        
           | ziddoap wrote:
           | I have not seen this take before, do you have any pointers to
           | someone making this claim?
        
             | thephyber wrote:
             | From my reading, the "ProtonMail is a honey trap" meme
             | seems to be a popular rumor. Seems like there might be some
             | smoke, but I haven't seen any fire.
             | 
             | Interesting breakdown[1] of one of the claims that E2E
             | encryption on ProtonMail is broken.
             | 
             | I'm assuming that Proton storage is a product from the same
             | team as ProtonMail.
             | 
             | [1] https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4177
        
             | rettichschnidi wrote:
             | Founders with US affiliation/physicist creating crypto
             | products [1], faulty claims how the relevant Swiss law
             | (BUPF) applies to them [2], doing crypto in JavaScript on
             | the client side, etc. To me, this smells like Crypto AG
             | [3][4].
             | 
             | [1] https://proton.me/about/team
             | 
             | [2] https://steigerlegal.ch/2019/07/27/protonmail-
             | transparenzber...
             | 
             | [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG
             | 
             | [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rubicon
        
               | andrewinardeer wrote:
               | Is the suggestion that founders who have US affiliation
               | are automatically in bed with three letter agencies?
        
           | triyambakam wrote:
           | So what's the alternative?
        
       | swijck wrote:
       | The world changes once you realize why usually encryption is
       | capped at AES256...
        
         | oconnore wrote:
         | 256 bit symmetric cryptography keys are a bit like picking one
         | atom in the universe (10^80 atoms, or 1000000000000000000000000
         | 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000). Your
         | opponent would have to test half of the atoms in the universe
         | to have a reasonable chance of getting the right key.
         | 
         | That's generally understood to be not feasible.
        
           | alwayslikethis wrote:
           | https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/09/the_doghouse_.
           | ..
           | 
           | It's more than that. Simply incrementing your way through a
           | 256 bit counter is impossible by the thermodynamic cost
           | alone.
        
         | ziddoap wrote:
         | Care to enlighten us? What did you realize?
        
           | levkk wrote:
           | It's too CPU heavy and your webservers crash under load would
           | be my guess, for no added benefit [1] of course.
           | 
           | [1] https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/14068/why-
           | most-...
        
       | ThePhysicist wrote:
       | Nice to see that Tresorit didn't have any serious issues in this
       | analysis, I've been using that for a long time and it works
       | really great, also one of the few players that have a really good
       | Linux client.
       | 
       | The two vulnerabilities they found seem pretty far-fetched to me,
       | basically the first is that a compromised CA server will be able
       | to create fake public keys, which I honestly don't know how one
       | could defend against? Transparency logs maybe but even that
       | wouldn't solve the issue entirely when sharing keys for the first
       | time. The second one around unencrypted metadata is hard to
       | assess without knowing what metadata is affected, it seems that
       | it's nothing too problematic.
        
       | paulgerhardt wrote:
       | My understanding was that Tarsnap was just fine and that was the
       | preferred solution for Hacker News outside Dropbox.
        
         | vmfunction wrote:
         | Or https://syncthing.net
        
       | CPAhem wrote:
       | We use Syncdocs (https://syncdocs.com) to do end-to-end Google
       | Drive encryption.
       | 
       | The keys stay on the client. It is secure, but means the files
       | are only decryptable on the client, so keys need to be shared
       | manually. I guess security means extra hassle.
        
       | V__ wrote:
       | Since ente.io's server is just an object storage, I feel at some
       | point either ente or someone else is going to make a drive app
       | for it.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2024-10-10 23:00 UTC)