

Wuala: Secure Cloud Storage - greyman
http://www.wuala.com/en/about/
I am evaluating this cloud service since yesterday, and it looks promising so far. Since data are not stored un-encrypted on the company servers, it means that there is not a web access to files, but I am not missing this feature that much. Real-time syncing works fine, although it seems to be a bit slower comparing to Dropbox.
======
kijin
Seriously? Wuala is a service run by LaCie. LaCie is owned by Seagate, an
American corporation. It doesn't matter where the servers are, because all the
important decisions will be made in Cupertino, California.

[http://www.lacie.com/us/company/news/news.htm?id=10722](http://www.lacie.com/us/company/news/news.htm?id=10722)

Now, client-side encryption is a much more interesting aspect of their
service, but is it worth the trouble if Wuala's clunky client takes 100 times
longer than Dropbox to sync a file between two devices? Ditto for SpiderOak,
JungleDisk, and every other backup/sync solution that I've used so far that
boasts client-side encryption. And it wasn't due to Dropbox's deduplication,
either. Some of them just talked lazily with the server for several minutes
before they even started to upload/download any files.

~~~
sillysaurus
Why not just store a TrueCrypt volume(s) in Dropbox?

~~~
RKearney
This is assuming the Government doesn't force Dropbox to install a keylogger
on their client to get users TrueCrypt passphrases and possibly keyfiles.

~~~
a3_nm
If Dropbox bundled a keylogger with the Dropbox client, I'm pretty sure it
would eventually attract some attention...

~~~
pasbesoin
Who's to say they can't be convinced to push a one-off update to your
account/machine. Perhaps a transitory one, to help cover their tracks?

The underlying problem is that you're trusting closed client software from a
third-party. Once that is running on your system, arguably it's game over as
far as what Dropbox or its like can and can't do to you.

(If you trust them, ok. But when documents state that "they're next", many of
us start to wonder. And again, this isn't just access to a server. Through
their client software, this is access to your machine, that you've already
granted.

Admittedly, I'm describing the typical Dropbox user scenario and not where the
client is manually applying -- or not -- each update, and somehow supposedly
gaining insight into the capabilities of each update/version before doing so.
And I'm also ignoring various forms of restricting the access of the Dropbox
client, although if they really want you, they and parties using them would
have extensive resources to apply to breaking out of such constraints.)

~~~
mike-cardwell
[https://grepular.com/Protecting_Your_GNU_Linux_System_from_D...](https://grepular.com/Protecting_Your_GNU_Linux_System_from_Dropbox)

~~~
tripzilch
Very interesting and useful, not just for securing DropBox either.

FYI this article suggests to use encfs for an encrypted folder in your
dropbox, this comment
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5855465](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5855465)
suggests that this might not be a wise choice, so you might want to
(re)consider that part.

------
gahahaha
"""Do you plan to open the source code?

Currently not. Opening the source code of Wuala would consume quite some time
and effort, and commitment to maintain it. If you are a software engineer and
would like to see how Wuala works, feel free to apply for a job at Wuala."""

ಠ_ಠ So.. an alternative, but not the solution we need.

~~~
shin_lao
And what would having the source code change?

Unless you host the data yourself, if you don't trust Wuala there is no
guarantee the binaries you use are built from the source code you have.

~~~
fmavituna
You can see the client code and confirm that it actually encrypts all of the
data and use your own copy rather than their binaries.

Technically if the client is not sending not encrypted data and encrypts
without a foul, then nothing they can do on the server-side can cause leaking
your data.

~~~
shin_lao
Just two ideas on top of my head:

Through auto updates you can make sure that you get the backdoored version or
you can have an exploit within the software to allow "silent" remote updates
(good luck finding that).

So well... Either you do it end to end, or you trust the third party.

~~~
claudius
Nobody sane wants software to auto-update, especially not security-relevant
software. This is in particular true if you reviewed the source code of the
software at one point in time.

Furthermore, for the software to be able to even auto-update, it would have to
be able to change its own binary. I don’t know how this particular piece of
software works, but it is possible to run FUSE ‘drivers’ as a user on Linux,
with the binary safely sitting in /usr/bin, hence removing any possibility to
auto-update (if you don’t do shady tricks like placing an ‘updated’ binary
somewhere and changing the user’s PATH – and even that could – in theory – be
avoided by mounting all user-writeable things noexec).

~~~
drdaeman
From
[http://www.wuala.com/en/download/linux](http://www.wuala.com/en/download/linux):

> The package installs Wuala and registers our repository for further updates.

This is even more harmful that it sounds, as someone who has repo access (be
it some evil staff member or, more possibly, inturder) may push not only
malicious Wuala build, but any package with higher version number than in
other repos (say, a linux-image-999.999 with a bundled rootkit) and if user
was incautious it will be installed on system update.

~~~
claudius
That is not really auto-update (only if you enabled it system-wide) – and
after reviewing the source code, which is necessary anyhow to make sure it is
actually ‘secure’, you would then remove the file in /etc/apt/sources.list.d
and be happy :-)

------
solnyshok
I used Wuala for couple of years, when it was free and allowed earning a much
larger quota by sharing own drive space to host other user's data. I used it
to keep around 100GB of my personal data. Used to be good while it lasted.
Encrypted, distributed, redundant. Then LaCie bought it and turned it into a
Dropbox clone. Now I use AeroFS, also tried TorrentSync. Both a roughly equal.
I just felt lazy changing from already running and tuned AeroFS to anything
else. If you have 24x7 homeserver at home it is very hard to justify paying
for storage at dropbox or skydrive or google. I built my homeserver on the
latest Atom, so it is frugal (~10W) and completely silent (no fan, SSD). It's
dualcore 2.1GHz and has enough grunt for simultaneous NAS, torrents, and plays
1080p mkv to the attached TV. No place for Wuala in this arrangement anymore.

~~~
pacomerh
It's still free, I don't pay a dime.

~~~
solnyshok
how much storage you've got there?

------
iHypnos
Hello there, Gianluca from Wuala here.

First, this is how Wuala works: You as an user place a file in the client. The
file gets encrypted (including using your password and username) and then gets
uploaded and split into different pieces. We are currently using AES-256 for
encryption (and RSA 2048 fpr signature and key exchange when sharing a folder
and SHA-256 for integrity checks). The password does NOT get transmitted and
there is nothing like a master key or similar. That means in worst ever case
if someone would have access to our servers somehow, they'd get a piece of
encrypted data which is not readable and not decryptable (not even for us as
the provider.

Secondly, some people tend to confuse security with anonymity. Wuala is
secure, but how about anonymity? We have your email address, your username and
we know how much storage space you have. As you see, that is not anonymous,
but has nothing to do with the security of your files.

Are we planning to open source the code? Eventually yes, but as we already
stated, this takes a lot of time and effort. Oh and yes, we are nice guys. Not
because we're Swiss, but in general :)

~~~
nodata
Are you planning on allowing camera upload? I can't get people using your
product without it...

~~~
iHypnos
we are planning camera upload yes :)

------
danso
So honest question, but how is having your data stored in Switzerland (where
Wuala is based) any different than having it in the US? Or is it just the
promise of local encryption that makes it safer?

Some purported info about data protection for Switzerland:

[http://www.dataprotection.ch/en/disclosing-personal-
data.asp](http://www.dataprotection.ch/en/disclosing-personal-data.asp)

> _Restrictions on disclosure

The DPA does not permit the disclosure of sensitive data or personality
profiles to third parties without lawful justification. The consent of the
data subject can constitute a lawful justification. Breach of this prohibition
is an offence if knowledge of the sensitive data has been gathered in the
course of a professional activity requiring knowledge of such data and can be
punished by a fine of up to CHF 10'000.--. If the fine is not paid, it can be
replaced by imprisonment for up to 3 months._

And Wuala's own policy:
[http://www.wuala.com/en/about/privacy](http://www.wuala.com/en/about/privacy)

> _6\. Disclosure to third parties

Basically, your data is not transmitted to third parties. However, LaCie may
release personal data if the law requires it to do so or in the good-faith
belief that such action is necessary to comply with any laws or respond to a
court order, subpoena, or search warrant or to protect LaCie's rights and
interests. Furthermore, you expressly agree that LaCie can disclose personal
data to identified third parties (e.g. owners of intellectual property rights)
and/or government enforcement bodies in order to enforce the General terms and
conditions, particularly in case of founded indications that the laws or the
rights of a user or of third parties, particularly copyrights, other
industrial property rights or personal rights, have been violated , insofar as
such is necessary._

~~~
wcunning
Due to the manner in which data is client-side encrypted (password-based keys,
password not stored on their servers), they can hand your (encrypted) data to
any government with no ability to decrypt it. Now, depending on the outcome of
some cases before US Courts right now, you might be compelled to provide the
password to unencrypt the data. It's also worth noting that the password-based
asymmetric encryption schemes are less secure than the arbitrary key based
ones, but still it's better than nothing. In my case, I'm sold by the fact
that they provide more free storage than Dropbox and have a much better Linux
client (based on a FUSE plugin, a much nicer architecture in general).

~~~
pbhjpbhj
As it's closed source isn't it entirely possible that the client keeps copies
of the keys that are accessible on demand from the server end (I guess that
counts as a backdoor of sorts).

~~~
dllthomas
Open source is an incomplete defense against this - I don't know of a way of
proving what software is running on a remote host.

------
maggit
I recently tried replacing Dropbox with Wuala because of privacy concerns. I
failed, and in the process realized how successful Dropbox has been in
creating an awesome user experience!

I'm still looking for a locally encrypted Dropbox-alternative. So if any of
you are making one, please speak up :)

(Edit) I should specify that it was the user experience that made me give up
on Wuala, and any proper Dropbox alternative would need to offer at least
decent user experience. Looking forward to trying the alternatives you are
suggesting :)

~~~
davidjohnstone
On my "somebody should create this, and I might eventually" list is an open
source, P2P, optionally server-backed, encrypted Dropbox replacement.

Bittorrent's Sync almost gets there, but isn't open source. I haven't really
looked at it, but ownCloud might do what I want.

~~~
ondmagi
The ownCloud sync client for OS X pins one cpu core to 100% usage on my fairly
new i7 mbp, which effectively drains the battery quite quickly if you don't
notice.

Then it also seems to do a full scan of teh entire folder each time it sync's,
if you then have for example your iPhoto library (usually a few GBs) there,
the sync process will consume lots of CPU and tend to be out of date across
devices.

------
quchen
Sounds cool! I've been looking for a trustable Dropbox alternative so I don't
have to manually encrypt the contents all the time. I'll download and try it
out real q-

> Make sure Java [...] is installed.

:C

~~~
noinsight
I'm surprised that there isn't a "cloud encryption" software available yet. It
shouldn't be a complex project to encrypt & rename -> upload // download ->
decrypt & rename. You could store the original file names in the cloud in an
encrypted sqlite database or something.

~~~
rolleiflex
Here you go: [https://www.boxcryptor.com/en/boxcryptor-
classic](https://www.boxcryptor.com/en/boxcryptor-classic)

It's an offline application that runs on your computer that is transparent to
your actions. You just use the drive BC mounts instead of where Dropbox tells
you to use, the rest automatic.

------
sabret00the
It's from Lacie, so no thank you. I bought a Lacie drive and proceeded to copy
all my stuff onto it. Before I could get comfortable with it (so within the
first six months of purchase) and before I backed up my stuff, the drive
failed. I contacted Lacie about it and they proceeded to try and sell me a
service whereby they'd recover my data for €300. That would've brought my
total spend on the drive up to around £400. I begged and pleaded with them,
pointed out how unsavoury such a business practice was and all to no avail.
The drive has just been sitting down since with the data unrecovered. Personal
memories, music, films and professional data too. I've tried to recover the
data but that didn't work and I honestly feel ripped off. As a result, I've
vowed to never do business with Lacie again and to warn everyone of how
unscrupulous they are. Beware of Lacie and their subsidiaries.

~~~
amouat
Well, they should have replaced the drive if it failed within 6 months. But
expecting them to go to the lengths of recovering your data for free is a bit
hopeful.

~~~
sabret00the
Hopeful yes, but no one expects a drive failure before even half of the
warranty has expired surely?

~~~
delackner
The whole point of backups is that you should never expect a single hard drive
to stay alive, no matter how young it is. Lots of hard drives with defects die
early. For your own sanity, it is best to think of any data you have only one
physical copy of as data that may not be there tomorrow. Personally I don't
get comfortable until my most important data exists in two physical locations,
so fire is not a risk.

------
znowi
Or use BitTorrent Sync instead. I'm quite pleased with it and moved all my
data off Dropbox.

[http://labs.bittorrent.com/experiments/sync.html](http://labs.bittorrent.com/experiments/sync.html)

~~~
qznc
Not Open Source either.

------
Keyframe
Company may be in Europe, servers might be in Europe, you might be in Europe.
Nothing guarantees you that your data won't be routed through US where it can
be tapped into. That's the primary issue for me with the whole PRISM scandal.

~~~
VexXtreme
Data is encrypted client-side before being sent so I believe this is a non-
issue.

~~~
Keyframe
Data being encrypted doesn't mean it can't be archived in that Utah data
center. What capabilities they have there and what they do with it, we don't
know. Substantial decryption breakthrough was hinted at in several reports,
but what it is exactly - we have no idea.

~~~
gtt
>> Substantial decryption breakthrough was hinted at in several reports, but
what it is exactly - we have no idea.

Could you provide a link to those hints, please?

~~~
Keyframe
This is the first one that comes to my mind:
[http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/al...](http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/)

 _But “this is more than just a data center,” says one senior intelligence
official who until recently was involved with the program. The mammoth
Bluffdale center will have another important and far more secret role that
until now has gone unrevealed. It is also critical, he says, for breaking
codes. And code-breaking is crucial, because much of the data that the center
will handle—financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign
military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal
communications—will be heavily encrypted. According to another top official
also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several
years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex
encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also
many average computer users in the US. The upshot, according to this official:
“Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.”_

------
simgidacav
Not to be cynic, but what prevents those guys from putting a backdoor as well?
Yeah, sure, Swiss guys are good. Are they?

In the end, IMHO, the only software which can be trusted is the FOSS. From
this perspective Dropbox is good: the client is open source. Of course nothing
is encrypted in there.

~~~
lucian1900
Dropbox's client is not open source by any stretch of the imagination.

~~~
simgidacav
[https://www.dropbox.com/help/247/en](https://www.dropbox.com/help/247/en)

On the first I was like "ops, said bullshit"... but actually it seems like
it's GPL.

~~~
lucian1900
That is only nautilus-dropbox (file manager integration) and the installer.
Dropbox itself is distributed as a binary blob.

------
Mindphreaker
I've been using this since the very early alpha status. It's a really nice
storage solution with a very sophisticated technology too.

For anyone curious about the technology behind here is an early tech talk from
one of the founders. It may be a little bit outdated now but still
interesting:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xKZ4KGkQY8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xKZ4KGkQY8)

------
moystard
Despite thorough researches and testing, I have never been able to find a good
alternative to Dropbox in term of seamless synchronisation of my files, and
accessibility across all the platforms I use.

To secure my data, I just use BoxCryptor. It creates an encrypted volume
within my Dropbox. It is free for non commercial use.

~~~
sahirh
Have a look at BitTorrent Sync:
[http://labs.bittorrent.com/experiments/sync.html](http://labs.bittorrent.com/experiments/sync.html)

One advantage is that there's no third-party storage of data involved.

~~~
moystard
Thank you, will have a look.

------
lazyjones
Wuala is great, but the short summary is a bit misleading. There is a real
risk of government agencies forcing LaCie to push you a client update that
removes encryption, in an older version of their T&C / product info, this was
mentioned explicitly.

~~~
Toshio
I also don't buy the whole premise of US government - bad, EU governments -
good.

When push comes to shove, governments everywhere will have no qualms about
invading people's privacies en masse.

Human nature is the same everywhere. Power corrupts everywhere.

~~~
ff10
Switzerland is a non-EU country. Switzerland has a long tradition of civil
liberties, rights and participation. This results in regular legally binding
referendums on the one side and tax evasions from civilians of other countries
on the other.

~~~
simgidacav
The fact that they have been "good guys" until now doesn't say anything about
the fact that they will be "good guys" forever.

~~~
ff10
This applies to good guys all over the world since ever. Btw, I did not state
anywhere that I consider Switzerland as being the good guys. Applying
qualities of character to a state is misleading IMHO.

------
penetrarthur
Wuala is terrible. It is constantly eating up 30% of cpu when idling.
Sometimes it doesn't sync at all for a few days. There is a "Use LAN" feature,
but it doesn't work.

------
VuongN
The problem here is: the people who has data (Wuala) also determine how the
files are encrypted.

No box is ever unbreakable, however, the chance of breaking it is much bigger
if you have the locksmith holding on to the box.

I've talked a little bit about this in my humble blog post not too long ago
about a simplistic view of security in the cloud:
[http://vuongnguyen.com/personal-business-cloud-
security.html](http://vuongnguyen.com/personal-business-cloud-security.html).

-V.

------
OnlyHave2Cores
There released an interesting paper regarding their key managment for multiple
users, when they were a reserach project at the ETH.

Cryptree: A folder tree structure for cryptographic file systems -
[http://boga.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/res/Docs/wuala-
cryptree...](http://boga.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/res/Docs/wuala-cryptree.pdf)

------
gtt
I'm not a security expert neither do I understand cryptography hence the
question: I assume they are not using the original password to encrypt data.
They are generating a symmetric encryption key and encrypt it with the
original password, storing it along with the encrypted data on their servers.
The question is how secure the encryption on symmetric key? What if it is
easily brutfocable?

------
sp8
We've been recommending this as an alternative to Dropbox where I work (in the
UK) for a few years now, for exactly the reasons given in the title text. Yes,
its a shame its Java-based, but they do have clients for Windows, Mac, Linux
iOS and Android.

(No, I'm not connected to Wuala in any way, I don't even use the service
myself, but as an alternative to Dropbox I think its a good one.)

------
Splendor
Regardless of the service's value I found the security explanation on this
page
([https://www.wuala.com/en/learn/technology](https://www.wuala.com/en/learn/technology))
to be a great example of clear communication about the differences between
client-side encryption, SSL security, etc.

------
jellicle
For what it's worth, what you need is:

\-- a company with no connections to the United States. Ideally, it should be
privately owned by a foreign individual known for strong privacy views and who
has promised never to sell.

\-- local encryption

\-- open source ("trust but verify")

\-- actually works

Wuala, from the comments here, meets only one of those four requirements.

~~~
donatzsky
Uh, just one? The way I count it's 2.5 out of 4.

It's a Swiss company, owned by LaCie (French) which is again owned by Seagate
(US). So I would say that's half a point.

Data is en-/decrypted locally. There's a reason they don't have a web
interface, but require you to use the client.

It's indeed not open source. Would be nice if it was.

And it actually does work. There's room for improvement (isn't there always?),
but in my experience it's working well.

------
adrinavarro
Another alternative is hubiC. It's run by OVH, perhaps one of the most
"techno-geek" companies in Europe that you can find… I don't see them feeding
content to governments without any reason.

In fact, they opened a DC in Canada and not the U.S. and one can guess why.

~~~
andor
_In fact, they opened a DC in Canada and not the U.S. and one can guess why._

Because it's culturally closer, I'd guess. OVH is a French company, and their
Canadian data center is just outside of Montreal.

------
josephagoss
It requires Java?

~~~
joosters
Yes, just installed and then immediately uninstalled after I got the 'install
java' prompt :(

It's not Wuala's fault, but forcing me to put java back on my desktop is a big
hurdle. It's going to take an absolutely _amazing_ piece of software to make
me deal with that horrendous bug-ridden security hole again.

~~~
morsch
I don't trust the Java sandbox to protect me while running arbitrary code. So
I don't use the Java browser plugin.

But I don't see how the desktop runtime is a security hole (you're running
binaries you trust outside a sandbox) and I very much doubt it's any more
buggy than your average Python, Ruby, Node.js, etc. runtime. Or, for that
matter, your average native library.

~~~
joosters
Can you (easily) install one without the other? I know I can go around my
browsers and disable the plugins after an install, but then I'm going to have
to do the same thing each time there's a java security update and the runtime
gets upgraded. Not to mention Oracle's crappy habits of bundling toolbars &
other crud along with each security patch.

------
workhere-io
There's also Jottacloud
([http://www.jottacloud.com/](http://www.jottacloud.com/)), a Norwegian
Dropbox alternative.

~~~
tomelders
Interesting. Anyone got any experience with Jottacloud they wouldn't mind
sharing?

------
rsync
rsync.net. Zurich, Hong Kong. Warrant Canary[1].

Straight up unix filesystem (ZFS) so you can point duplicity[2] (or anything
else) at it.

If you need something like dropbox, we are NOT for you.

We have special rates for HN folks. Email us.

[1]
[http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt](http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt)

[2] [http://duplicity.nongnu.org/](http://duplicity.nongnu.org/)

------
phxql
Problem with Wuala is that you can't access your data when you are offline,
unlike DropBox, which stores an unencrypted version on your harddisk.

------
joewee
How about Dropbox + TrueCrypt + Automount? Files are decrypted in memory,
files you need to share you can keep in unencrypted format.

~~~
quchen
I've been doing this with a small volume (1 MiB), but it always kept me
wondering how much traffic a minor change in an encrypted volume causes - even
a single bit flip should drastically change the container if the encryption is
good. I wouldn't want to upload for an hour each time I see a typo in my
files.

~~~
lawl
No. From the truecrypt FAQ [0]:

> The ciphertext block size used by TrueCrypt is 16 bytes (i.e., 128 bits).

Meaning one bitflip should only sync 16 bytes since dropbox only transmits
deltas. Of course this now depends on dropbox' delta sync implementation.

From a quick google search [1]:

> For what it's worth, Dropbox claims to create hashes on every 4MB of each
> file. That way, if you change a contiguous 2MB of a 100MB file, it will
> likely only need to upload 4MB (or 8MB if you cross into a second 4MB block)
> to re-sync the file.

So worst case if a bitflip happens to change a truecrypt block that doesn't
align with dropbox' chunks you're looking at around 8MiB. That's still quite
an amout for a bitflip but i think it's feasible with todays connection
speeds.

[0] [http://www.truecrypt.org/faq](http://www.truecrypt.org/faq)

[1] [http://serverfault.com/questions/52861/how-does-dropbox-
vers...](http://serverfault.com/questions/52861/how-does-dropbox-version-
upload-large-files)

------
pellias
Floodgate is opening up just like when Google shutdown it's reader. Let's see
who will be the winner.

------
gasull
EncFS + Dropbox

Although this won't help if you get a rootkit in an update, since the source
is closed.

------
lettergram
Yeah, i'm sure the French would never have access to the servers in their
country...

------
strobe
another dropbox alternative
[https://github.com/haiwen/seafile](https://github.com/haiwen/seafile) on you
own servers

------
gasull
What about EncFS (or some other encryption) + Bittorrent Sync?

------
skarmklart
How does this compare to Tarsnap?

------
ergest
Way to be opportunistic!

------
paullik
5GB Free. Awesome!

