How secure is Dropbox

Apreciar

I have signed up to Wuala, it seems to do all I need with encryption before loading. I can use across desktop, laptop and iPod and also back up.

Stompa

buglawton wrote: »

Technically not possible, as Truecrypt needs to mount/unmount entire drives full of files totally under it's own encrypted control. No other software can tinker with the contents except for the device that the drive has been mounted on (e.g. your laptop).

Yes, but a Truecrypt volume is just a file, if Dropbox can detect which part(s) of that file have changed it would only need to upload that changed part.

Either way, I figured it might be worth a quick experiment. So I created a 200MB Truecrypt volume on my HD, mounted it, put a single simple text file in it, and dismounted it. Then copied the TC volume into my Dropbox folder, it took around 49 minutes to upload.

I then mounted the TC volume (in the Dropbox folder), opened the text file, changed 1 character, saved it, then dismounted the TC volume.

At this point Dropbox started to sync the TC volume file, it took less than 15 seconds to complete.

buglawton

Good test and the result sounds a little miraculous as it appears that Dropbox can get inside the 200MB encrypted volume, see what changed and sew it back together again.

The acid test would be: Connect a 2nd PC with Dropbox and TC installed that is also synced to the same mounted volume 'before' a small file is changed. Change small file inside the mounted volume on PC 1. Observe the sync time on PC 1..Next, watch PC 2 as it re-syncs, how long? And does the changed small file appear correctly on PC 2?

Stompa

buglawton wrote: »

Good test and the result sounds a little miraculous as it appears that Dropbox can get inside the 200MB encrypted volume, see what changed and sew it back together again.

I imagine Dropbox doesn't care whether it's encrypted. From Dropbox's point of view Truecrypt is just modifying bytes in a single file (the TC volume), presumably using some low-level I/O calls, and perhaps Dropbox hooks into those calls so that it can maintain a record of which bytes have changed?

johnnyboyrebel

Depends what you are uploading to it. i just use it to send finished productions to various people (Im a producer)

If people did hack into my account then they can feel free to have a listen, doesnt bother me

Noone is going to upload secure, private files to something like this anyway surely??

Linbox

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/encrypt-dropbox-files-boxcryptor/



If you use BoxCryptor to encrypt (parts of) your Dropbox folder, an USB stick or an external harddisk and want to share the encrypted data with a computer running Linux or Mac OS X, a great feature of BoxCryptor is the compatibility with EncFS, an open-source cryptographic filesystem.

So in Ubuntu or any derivative ie Linux Mint



From Software Manager search for and install "cryptkeeper" (without the quotes)
You'll need to add cryptkeeper to the Startup Applications - you'll need to add- /usr/bin/cryptkeeper as the command.



Take a quick look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlIfTBKK6EI

mttylad

Alternatively do not put anything in your dropbox that would be a problem if it was borrowed by someone else... BTW how would they do that?