[HN Gopher] CryptPad: An Alternative to the Google Suite
___________________________________________________________________
CryptPad: An Alternative to the Google Suite
Author : ColinWright
Score : 135 points
Date : 2025-05-09 11:37 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (cryptpad.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (cryptpad.org)
| righthand wrote:
| Cryptpad is all right though it locks you into Cryptpad. If you
| want to extract your documents you have to use their UI to
| decrypt them. What I am looking for is a document interface that
| works with Syncthing. Let syncthing handle the syncing and
| encryption.
| misterdata wrote:
| So, basically any local productivity tool, saving files in a
| synced folder.
|
| While this works, Syncthing does not really provide anything
| for fine-grained collaboration or sharing (you only share full
| folders). Encrypted peers do allow storing files on a machine
| that you don't have to trust.
| righthand wrote:
| I don't need anything from Syncthing for fine grained
| collaboration, the text editors do that.
| andai wrote:
| What are you looking for? I used to use Notational Velocity
| in an encrypted volume hosted on Dropbox, but I ended up
| switching to Obsidian for the mobile support.
| righthand wrote:
| I'm not actually looking, Syncthing solves 90% and I'm
| hard pressed to believe anyone needs live document
| collaboration outside of an office context that
| screensharing doesn't already solve. Most of the time
| when everyone "collaborates", only 1-2 people of the
| group are doing the typing.
| colordrops wrote:
| Also no easy way to import everything from Google drive.
| aaravchen wrote:
| You have to download everything in your Drive to your local
| system first, then unzip it all, but then you can upload the
| entire folder to CryptPad.
|
| Google isn't going to make it easy for a competitor to
| transfer content, and I'd rather the CryptPad devs work on
| the product and not a feature users will each only use once
| at most.
|
| The only annoyance I had was "converting" the uploaded files
| to the "native" CryptPad format. It doesn't actually have a
| different native type, it just seems to be a registering with
| the CryptPad internals which of its predefined types the file
| is (E.g. Document, Presentation, etc). And you don't have to
| do it for the file to open and edit just fine. But you have
| to open each file "as <Type>" from the right click menu, then
| save it back out and delete the "original" to convert it.
| j45 wrote:
| Onboarding is a big one time feature to get users to first
| value.
| sillyfluke wrote:
| I came across cryptpad as cryptpad.cz but couldn't figure out
| who was behind it at the time. At least with this link you can
| get to at least one seemingly legit dev, which makes me take it
| more seriously. Is cryptpad.cz a fork of this or vice versa?
| Tomte wrote:
| CryptPad is developed by XWiki as a side project.
| sillyfluke wrote:
| Do you know of any publicized auditing done on the E2E
| aspect of it? Curious about that since it's part of the
| name and a prominent publicized feature.
| jraph wrote:
| I feel like side needs to be precised a bit. Although it
| admittedly doesn't generate nearly as much revenue as
| XWiki, several people are paid full time to work on it, and
| it receives public grants. It is an important project of
| XWiki SAS.
|
| (I work for XWiki, on XWiki though)
| jraph wrote:
| cryptpad.cz seems to be one of the many instances of
| CryptPad. I don't know who is behind.
|
| CryptPad.org is the official website of the project (and
| cryptpad.fr an instance maintained by the original devs).
| nout wrote:
| One option for you that's half way there is to use Obsidian on
| top of markdown files and sync those with Syncthing.
|
| Obsidian has many of the rich editing capabilities, especially
| when you install plugins. For plus points the files are very
| portable and there is (almost) no "vendor lock in" because it's
| all markdown textfiles.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| Or just use Obsidian's built-in E2E encrypted syncing.
|
| https://obsidian.md/sync
|
| But yeah, since it stores everything as flat markdown files,
| you can sync or archive your Obsidian docs folder with
| anything.
| dtkav wrote:
| I'm building a plugin for Obsidian called Relay that makes
| Obsidian real-time collaborative [0].
|
| It isn't end-to-end encrypted (yet), but you can self host
| the document collaboration server on a private network (like
| tailscale).
|
| If you're like me and you need real-time collaboration and
| privacy but e2ee isn't a strict requirement for your
| collaborative docs then you might enjoy it.
|
| I also use Obsidian sync for e2ee device sync -- it is a
| fantastic product.
|
| [0] https://relay.md
| lysace wrote:
| I've been a heavy Google Docs/Sheets/etc user since they
| launched almost two decades ago (2006).
|
| I've exported to structured formats a handful of times, out of
| thousands of documents.
|
| CryptPad really should build this though.
| bjelkeman-again wrote:
| I had to export all of our documents and sheets out of Google
| Drive. I used something called Google Take Out, that packages
| everything and puts it somewhere where you can download zip
| files. It took a few days for it to be available. Except it
| didn't do what it said it did. It didn't export even half the
| files. I unpacked and compared with what was online.
|
| In the end I had to download folders by hand. Took me half a
| day. And make sure they weren't too big, because then it
| wouldn't include everything.
| jraph wrote:
| Synching is for syncing your files across several devices of
| yours. CryptPad is for working with other people, possibly at
| the same time on the same document.
|
| The tools donc comapte, the needs are very different, and you
| might find them both useful in different situations.
|
| It seems to me syncthing simply doesn't need anything more, you
| just use the desktop application of your choice for editing
| your documents.
|
| And yes, you are kinda locked into CryptPad if you don't export
| your documents as you go. The server not having your documents
| at a central place and all the documents having different
| decryption keys means it's hard to provide a simple "take out"
| zip export. I guess some automation tool accessing your browser
| profile could be built to help with this.
| hmsimha wrote:
| I think there are some issues with cryptpad, most significantly
| that documents which are shared via their share link (default way
| of sharing) will effectively be shared with Google, Apple,
| Microsoft, and so on. I think this is dangerous because some
| users may be under the impression that Cryptpad secures their
| documents from the prying of big tech's eyes, but since it's
| guaranteed that at least some document collaborators will be
| using those companies' browsers, and browser history is synced,
| the URLs (which contain the key to decrypt the document after the
| fragment) to any document which is shared with more than handful
| of cypherpunks will certainly end up shared with the main browser
| vendors
|
| Additionally, they've failed to make some architectural and
| delivery decisions which would protect users from various attacks
| like a server compromise (for example, a server seized by an
| adversary may send malicious client code that conducts a document
| exfiltration), as well as document exfiltration via a malicious
| browser extension. Both of these can be mitigated somewhat by
| delivering the frontend as a desktop app or signed browser
| extension, and setting reasonable CSPs in the decryption modules.
| This is exactly the reason Signal doesn't offer a web app.
|
| Cryptpad _does_ offer the ability to additionally encrypt
| documents with shared passwords, and this offers a fair modicum
| of greater protection against document interception. But this isn
| 't the default document mode, so I doubt most documents are
| password-protected in practice.
|
| I did share all of the above with the Cryptpad team, and was told
| they don't intend to address the above issues, so I'd recommend
| against putting to much faith in them for the time being.
| rkagerer wrote:
| _...and any document which is shared with more than handful of
| cypherpunks will certainly end up shared with the main browser
| vendors_
|
| Can you suggest some best practices those cypherpunks can take
| to mitigate the weaknesses and use it in a secure fashion?
|
| Eg. I don't sync browser history and tend to turn off other
| cloud-supported features (including "logging into" my browser).
| hmsimha wrote:
| Regarding the URLs containing the decryption key, of course a
| strong password is a big benefit here, but if you're not
| syncing history that could perhaps eliminate big tech from
| the loop (though you may also need to turn off all telemetry
| by your browser)
|
| Using a browser without extensions installed would prevent
| against extension-based exfiltration.
|
| The only way to prevent against a malicious server would
| probably be to build the frontend yourself and use it with
| the server (I haven't tried doing this)
| thecrash wrote:
| Your problem statement is effectively "I want to share access
| to my documents very informally with people who don't care to
| have any security practices, but still keep them secure"
|
| There's another way of sharing in cryptpad though, which is for
| each user to create an identity/account. Once those you're
| collaborating with have accounts, documents and folders can be
| shared by granting access within cryptpad's UI. No secrets have
| to be circulated.
| hmsimha wrote:
| I've worked with a few orgs which have used cryptpad, and I'm
| sorry, but Cryptpad doesn't make it possible to share
| documents securely unless again, everyone in the org is able
| to follow security protocol to an exceptionally rare degree.
|
| Even you seem to think sharing via identity somehow bypasses
| the problem, when in fact this just sends them a
| "notification" with a share link containing the same secret
| URL (not to mention, as far as I can tell, there's no way for
| them to add the document to their own drive, so if they want
| to access it later they either need to save the share link or
| find it in their notification panel under "notification
| history" which is super unintuitive).
|
| And again, those secrets are stored in your browser history.
| In a group I was involved with, the workflow was to create
| documents and share them with others, or put the share link
| in a Signal group. Even if one were to try to tell everyone
| in the group that the link should only be opened in a browser
| that doesn't share its history with its vendor, clicking the
| link in Signal will happily just open it in which ever
| browser is configured as your system default anyway.
|
| Cryptpad effectively gives you the rope and then ties it into
| the noose around your neck for you, while you're not looking.
|
| Security theater is _at best_ mildly dangerous in a more
| typical scenario where it 's constructed around an
| application that isn't billed as a secure communication
| platform. When a tool advertised as user-friendly and
| privacy-enhancing is the subject of such theatrics, it's even
| more actively harmful because it instills a false sense of
| confidence. It would be like a safety helmet that explodes
| when the user grazes their head.
|
| So to recap, if you care about big tech companies gaining
| access to your secure documents, the _only_ way to use
| cryptpad in a remotely secure manner, in a group, is either
| by password protecting all documents with a strong password,
| or ensuring no one in your org ever opens a document in a
| browser with history syncing. And honestly, expecting the
| latter from 99% of groups that might use cryptpad is
| unreasonable, which is why I 'm saying it's _irresponsible_
| of Cryptpad to even allow password-less document creation
| (without so much as showing users a glaring red danger notice
| beforehand).
|
| The users are not primarily to blame for incorrect use of a
| software that's billed as privacy-preserving, when that
| software drops them off at the happy path and neglects to
| tell them, "by the way, we've booby-trapped the door to fire
| a footgun when opened unless you also turn the smaller knob
| on the far side with your other hand as you open it."
|
| I realize the data exfiltration issues I mentioned are non-
| trivial to address (though by no means an immense project
| either), but I can't interpret the link situation as anything
| other than willful negligence, or worse, a honeypot; consider
| that users whose adversaries might include nation-state
| actors (for example, undocumented immigrants sharing
| resources with one another on how to access services while
| staying under the radar) are perhaps more exposed, because
| data brokers are more likely to deny state requests for data
| that can be seen as overly broad, whereas one specific type
| of data (browser history) on one domain becomes a pretty
| tightly scoped request.
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| Why is this dubbed as an alternative to Google suite and not
| Microsoft suite? They even used the Microsoft icons.
| crtasm wrote:
| While Google is mentioned in some of the user testimonials I
| don't think the submitter should have added it to the title
| here.
| george_perez wrote:
| I think because it's web-based only, much like Google Docs and
| the like are. For my Cryptpad replaced Google Docs as a live-
| collaboration tool.
| rspoerri wrote:
| Realtime collaborative text editing is afaik something
| Microsoft is not doing.
| indigodaddy wrote:
| Can you not effectively use it as such, however?
| okanat wrote:
| It is there with Office 365 and VS Code live share. They were
| among the first to make a complete and commercially
| successful coediting experience.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| The webified version of Office goes back years. It used to be
| a free add-on to SharePoint and allowed up to 64 simultaneous
| users per document.
|
| I believe the current Office 365 came from that codebase as
| it has similar features.
| crimsoneer wrote:
| When cryptpad was first launched, MS Office was very much a
| desktop product and Google was the web first collaboration
| platform. That's obviously because (a teeny bit) less true.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Honestly my primary peeve with Cryptpad is the incredible load
| time... which is justified in scenarios of private documents, but
| completely unjustified in every single time someone shares a
| Cryptpad link with me which is certainly intended for public
| consumption.
| weinzierl wrote:
| There are other free instances available, for example
| cryptpad.digitalcourage.de is used by many people I know.
|
| See cryptpad.org/instances for a list.
| aaravchen wrote:
| I really appreciate that the team hasn't rested on their laurels
| with just creating an encrypted cloud-based OnlyOffice wrapper
| and they've actively pushed I to the space of filling tool gaps.
| Their markdown files are a nice addition for a simple note that
| doesn't need to be a full Document.
| dbbk wrote:
| This looks awful, is it from the 90s?
| emilfihlman wrote:
| How does this compare with the French/German
| https://github.com/suitenumerique/docs ?
| jraph wrote:
| Cryptpad is E2E encrypted. At a first glance, this is not.
|
| Which also means its features won't be _constrained_ by the
| E2EE architecture.
|
| At a first glance, it seems the suite numerique wants to be
| simpler than full traditional office documents. It seems to
| compare itself with notion and outline.
|
| CryptPad has very simple modules and also more complex,
| OnlyOffice based modules.
|
| Ultimately, if the suite numerique's frontend is able to send
| editing patches as JSON, it should not be too complicated to
| make it work on a CryptPad server and make it E2EE, which is
| exactly what the CryptPad team did to OnlyOfficr (the "why not
| both" option)
| AdolpheGMartin wrote:
| See also:
|
| https://etherpad.org
| leelou2 wrote:
| After reading both the HN discussion and the testimonials on
| CryptPad's site, it's clear that privacy-focused collaboration
| tools are gaining traction. While some users prefer the
| flexibility of markdown-based workflows with tools like Obsidian
| and Syncthing, CryptPad seems to fill a unique niche for those
| who want a Google Docs-like experience without sacrificing
| privacy. The fact that you can collaborate in real time, share
| documents without accounts, and even self-host if needed, makes
| it a compelling option for teams and individuals who value both
| usability and security. I hope more projects continue to push the
| boundaries of privacy-first productivity!
| dtkav wrote:
| In the AI age having all of your files in markdown and away
| from AI enabled providers is making more and more sense.
|
| I know of several AI companies who use bespoke tools because
| otherwise their data would be shared with their competitors
| (e.g. notion -> openai, gdocs -> google, etc).
|
| It used to be that putting your docs on google "felt" safe
| because it was unlikely that some random google employee would
| read you random company docs. Now it seems unlikely to me that
| they _aren 't_ reading every doc with AI.
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| I tried cryptpad and it was good, with the main issue being
| inviting new users is really complicated. Users needed to
| register and then send their own "invite me" link, because the
| system encrypted their email address, so you can only use the
| link to invite them. This turned out too complicated for normal
| people (ok for computer users)
| jraph wrote:
| The normal way to invite people to a CryptPad document is to
| give them the shared link. No need to register or involve
| emails. Then, they just need to follow the link and it should
| just work. CryptPad is specifically designed with nontechnical
| users, because if you want something to be secure, it needs to
| be simple, and it is not desirable that privacy is limited to
| technical users only.
|
| What did you want to achieve?
| ldubost wrote:
| Hi,
|
| I'm from the CryptPad team.
|
| This is an interesting feedback.
|
| Note that you can also invite people by sending them a link to
| a document and then connect to them from the user sidebar. They
| don't really need an account to access documents.
|
| The main reason for the lack of simpler invitation using email
| is that we don't really want users to give us the mail of other
| users to invite. This goes against the "privacy" we are
| promising users.
|
| Ludovic
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-05-09 23:00 UTC)