Not saying Nextcloud is insecure, and i've never had any problems with it.
Currently trying to decide if Seafile is the way for me, though i dislike it's on disk fileformat (IIRC it's some adaptation of Git).
For now i use Resilio Sync.
Seafile's file storage format has the advantage that it's easy to revert a file or folder to some earlier revision, for example after accidentally deleting files.
It is often the case that software developed outside of China, for devices produced in China is alright, but on the other hand many companies like Honeywell simply contract all of their software development there as well, and it painfully shows. I shouldn't be able to buy a product in 2020 that has a linux kernel from 2012 and multiple remote code execution vulnerabilities just from public CVEs, but the Honeywell Tuxido security system managed it with ease.
Plus as far as I know neither ownCloud nor nextCloud went through a security audit and they are big piles of PHP with a lot more complexity than Seafile. So it's very likely that there are more bugs in phpCloud than in XiFile.
If you want some real security buy a DropBox/GoogleDrive/MSOneDrive subscription, hm?
This is inaccurate. Nextcloud does receive security audits and is in fact also used by quite some security-conscious organizations (to name a few: German Government, Siemens, ...)
There's also a bug bounty program that pays pretty decently considering the company size: https://hackerone.com/nextcloud. (Remote Code Execution = 10k, Auth Bypass = 4k - compare that to rewards that the FAANG pays and you'll see it's not that bad)
> and they are big piles of PHP with a lot more complexity than Seafile
I did a small audit of Seafile years ago and I don't think that argument flies.
For example, they copied https://github.com/django/django/blob/23c612199a8aaef52c3c7e... to https://github.com/haiwen/seahub/blob/b6f8935c0f355cc70145f9... and removed some security-critical checks. They removed the check for the password hasht here. (https://github.com/django/django/blob/23c612199a8aaef52c3c7e...)
Furthermore, the Django secret key was generated as shown at https://github.com/haiwen/seahub/blob/b6f8935c0f355cc70145f9....
``` def random_string(): """ Generate a random string (currently a random number as a string) """ return str(random.randint(0,100000)) ```
That's not really secure and copy-pasting Django core code and then removing security checks ... is shady at best.
Disclaimer: I wrote a significant part of the ownCloud code (https://github.com/owncloud/core/graphs/contributors), then forked it into Nextcloud. After some years I moved to Facebook to do application security there :-)
The bug bounty is very reassuring!
Thanks for this comment, and your work on {own/Next}Cloud!
There was a client on the appstore called "f-sync", but that is gone now.
Also, Resilio (with paid license) supports features that Syncthing didn't support like selective sync, and encrypted folders, which allows you to share a folder with someone for redundancy and have things stored encrypted on disk.
But then again, i don't put my sensitive information like passwords, ssh/pgp keys, tax returns and stuff like that in Resilio. I very rarely need those documents "on the go". Instead i have working documents, books, notes and more that i need access to, and while i'd rather not share them with the rest of the world, it would probably not make much difference if it was.
Furthermore, i can completely "wall off" Resilio Sync. It runs in a container on my public server, and files i need access to are mounted as NFSv4 shares "outside" the container. Access to the shares is managed through Kerberos.
So even if you make it inside the container, you can (probably) wreak havoc with the files on the NFS shares, but those are backed up, and unless you can find a way out of the container, or a bug in NFS, that's pretty much it.
The container has only the absolute minimum of binaries to allow Resilio to work, so you toolkit is kinda limited, at least when compared to Nextcloud which requies a lot of binaries/libraries to work, along with a PHP interpreter.
It's nice how when you click "Purchase" a second time, they tell you to donate to SyncThing instead.
I may or may not use it (gonna evaluate Syncthing to replace Resilio), but at least i can support the developer for making a thing that was VERY much needed.
For Syncthing there is of course the potential problem of the client leaking the secrets to the author, giving them unauthenticated access to the server.
Thanks for the pointer, i'll check it out, though i've had a "lifetime" license for Resilio for years, and it scratches my itch, so there's no pressure to switch.
I have used syncthing in the past for server to server synchronization, a task it performs extremely well, but previous attempts at creating a "road warrior" setup from iOS (with f:sync) all ended in clients taking minutes to connect to the backend, where Resilio would do it in seconds. I'll give it another try.
> For Syncthing there is of course the potential problem of the client leaking the secrets to the author, giving them unauthenticated access to the server.
Yes, that is the risk. It is significant because the credentials entered into the closed source Mobiussync app (that wraps the open source Syncthing node) would allow the author (if malicious, which I have no reason to believe they are) to access all of your files (even if your other nodes are behind firewalls, by design).
Now, I’d like to believe Mobiussync is doing the right thing. It aligns with their economic interests to not steal credentials, since nothing would kill their app sales faster if found out. I imagine it also would be easy to detect if the app was exfiltrating credentials by monitoring app communications. I’ve also read the announcement post: https://forum.syncthing.net/t/isyncthing-ios-client-for-sync... and appreciated the way the author engaged with the Syncthing community here: https://forum.syncthing.net/t/mobius-sync-ios-client-now-in-... . Based on my assessment of their conduct and the factors above, I feel almost certain Mobiussync does the right thing by its users.
But economic incentives change, authors change, bugs in code happen, and a good feeling is not the same as verifiability. The risk may be small but at stake is all your data.
I’d certainly pay more than the (very reasonable) price the authors ask for, for the additional peace of mind given by open source.
Fwiw Syncthing is working on this feature, not fully baked yet. On mobile so can't link but it's in nightly builds.
Everyone who lives together = "household"
Family not living together = "extended family"
Nextcloud provides us custom shares, user groups, public shares, URLs, better local clients, compared to the Resilio performance. Resilio was especially bad on Linux (but worked remarkably well on my android with a large SD card). With Nextcloud I can even choose to use WebDAV only if I don't want to mess with clients.
Calendar/contacts is handled by iCloud (Apple household, it's a Danish thing...)
Notes are handled by whatever each person finds the easiest. My wife defaults to the iOS notes app, i switch between various clear text editors.
File synchronization on desktops/laptops is handled by Synology Drive, which syncs beautifully whenever the machine is connected to our LAN, either directly or through VPN.
The only problem i needed to solve was ad-hoc access to files on mobile devices, preferably without opening ports, and since VPN doesn't always work from other private networks (ip scope clash usually), i chose not to use Synology tools for this. Besides, Synology Drive doesn't support selective sync, and while documents probably wouldn't be a problem, synchronizing gigabytes of books to my phone isn't really an option :)
Resilio on Linux does have a nasty habit of doing disk IO all the time, a habit that syncthing doesn't have. When i look at running processes, Resilio on linux is constantly using 2-5% CPU.
Thing I don't like is that it expects to be hooked to the internet, and it nags you about apps you should install but you have to install them from their cloud/app store.
Now there is a way to install the app store on your server, but it would be nicer to get started without having to buy into all that. So I just run the default apps.
As long as the apps you install don't need to make web requests on their own, they'll work fine.
Databases and other containers needed for the backend services run on another network as well, so if you make it inside nginx you will (of course) be able to access my already exposed backend services, but no direct access to databases and other services.
Before shutting down Nextcloud I used to have a resilio container running, and I would mount the data from that inside Nextcloud, so no direct contact between the two.
But then again, I just need access to files through a browser, and don’t need any of the advanced features of Nextcloud, so I’m still trying to find a better match. Looking at seafile if I ever find the time.