In today’s digital world, data privacy is paramount. While cloud services like Google Drive or Dropbox provide easy file sharing, they may not always align ...
How it works: I don’t know about this service in particular, but usually the shared contains the encryption key so like this: example.com/files/file_id/encryption_key or something similar
As for trust: This appears to be a individual, so you will have to just trust it when using the public instance. However, since it is FOSS, you can audit the code and spin up your own instance
Absolutely. If you’re at all worried about sending files through third party sites, set up your own. Provided you trust your own security skills, of course.
I would certainly be more interested in having an install under my own domain than using some rando’s that I don’t know.
How it works: I don’t know about this service in particular, but usually the shared contains the encryption key so like this: example.com/files/file_id/encryption_key or something similar
But if the key is in the URL, that’s provided by the server, where’s the utility of the encryption since the server knows it and so does everyone that has the URL?
In theory, yes. But if you follow the link and that leads to downloading the JS and running it, you’re already too late inspecting it.
And even if you review it once (and it wasn’t too large or obfuscated via minification), the next time you load a page, the JS can be different. I guess there could be a web browser extension for pinning the code?
The only practial alternative I know of is to have a local client you can review once (and after updates).
How it works: I don’t know about this service in particular, but usually the shared contains the encryption key so like this: example.com/files/file_id/encryption_key or something similar
As for trust: This appears to be a individual, so you will have to just trust it when using the public instance. However, since it is FOSS, you can audit the code and spin up your own instance
Absolutely. If you’re at all worried about sending files through third party sites, set up your own. Provided you trust your own security skills, of course.
I would certainly be more interested in having an install under my own domain than using some rando’s that I don’t know.
But if the key is in the URL, that’s provided by the server, where’s the utility of the encryption since the server knows it and so does everyone that has the URL?
So the trick is to use the
#fragmentpart of the URL, that is not sent to the server.Of course the JS one downloads from the server could easily upload it to it, so you still need to trust the JS.
But the JS code could be checked on the webpage, correct? If so, the page could be trysted (if vetted).
In theory, yes. But if you follow the link and that leads to downloading the JS and running it, you’re already too late inspecting it.
And even if you review it once (and it wasn’t too large or obfuscated via minification), the next time you load a page, the JS can be different. I guess there could be a web browser extension for pinning the code?
The only practial alternative I know of is to have a local client you can review once (and after updates).
Actually, I believe Firefox Send encoded the encryption key in a # URL anchor, as that’s never sent to the server, but accessible to the client.
example.com/files/file_id#encryption_id
Otherwise, the server would know the key after the file was retrieved.