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Comment by lojack | Hacker News Reader

> For the people running the computers, it doesn’t really matter where the data or the programs are at any one moment: The stuff is running inside a “cloud” of computing capability.

For the purposes of security, this makes a huge difference. It's also one of the biggest flaws with the authors argument. With a service like Dropbox, Google Drive, or Office 365; your files are likely stored both locally and on their servers. This undoubtedly make your files less secure... now potential attackers have two attack vectors when they would previously only have one.

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You don't need to sync Drive to your own storage. I don't. Do Dropbox and Office require that?

I know Dropbox at least has a selective sync option, you can choose which folders are to be synced with the local machine. The gotcha being that when you uncheck a folder it deletes that folder from the local file system.

those documents exist in some form, either partial or whole, in your local system memory, video memory, and probably a filesystem cache of some sort. they also traverse your network subsystem and other IO buffers/subsystems.

a root level compromise on your system can see any of this stuff in plaintext as it gets shifted around.

> a root level compromise on your system can see any of this stuff in plaintext as it gets shifted around.

Sure, but that was true without cloud storage, too. Worse: Without cloud storage, a root level compromise lets the attacker destroy your only copy.

However, this does not refute the argument that, with the cloud, the attacker can get at your data two places, instead of just one, thereby increasing the attack surface. (In fact, the attacker can get at it three places: in transit.)

I doubt this increase in the attack surface is meaningful. If someone gains control of my device they can in all likelihood initiate a transfer of my files from cloud storage. They can also gain control of the cloud service. But the probability of the latter is too small to consider. When A >> B, A+B =~ A

if you believe in unbreakable encryption, sure. but i don't. now it's traversing an unknown number of systems, every time you view or edit.

You don't have to believe in unbreakable encryption, just like you don't have to believe in unhackable cloud hosts. You just have to believe in hard enough to break and hard enough to hack. Then you're back to stuckagain's point, slightly revised: When A >> B and A >> C, A+B+C =~ A.

(Ah, that is, you have to believe that the encryption used in all legs of transit is hard enough to break.)

i was trying to make that point w/ the network and IO buffer statement, but that describes it much better.

It isn't a requirement, but they all provide apps that allow you to sync, and when you download any file, you're downloading a local copy of them. The people who know how to properly secure files aren't the same people reading and deriving value from this article.

Sure, you _can_ be more secure by using these services, but you aren't more secure simply by using them.

No sync is not enforced, but that is how most people run it.

The problem is if your local machine is compromised, then the attacker can delete you local files. These deletions are then synced to the cloud storage.

The same can happen if you get ransomware encrypting your local storage, the encrypted changes get synced to the cloud.

Dropbox at least protects against deletions and encryption by storing a version history of all files for the past 30 days or so. That doesn't protect the files very well against theft, but it does serve as a nice recovery option against unwanted / accidental changes:

https://www.dropbox.com/en/help/11

Ofcourse it matters where the data is at any one moment.

Obligatory XKCD: https://www.xkcd.com/908/

It "matters" but it's not your problem to solve, as a user.

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