Thursday, 19 March, 2009
Wuala’s unique encryption and privacy
Wuala offers a level of encryption that lets it stand out in comparison to others. When files are stored in Wuala, they are encrypted before they leave the computer. This mechanism makes it safe to store files in a distributed system and no-one, not even we as inventors and operators of the system, can read the data. As a consequence, it is not possible to recover your password in Wuala, it is the only key to your data.
Online backup solutions usually chose the same approach to guarantee privacy. What sets us apart from others is that we offer this high level of privacy while we still let you share files with others. This unique proposition is possible thanks to our Cryptree key management system (research paper).
Services like Box.net, Dropbox, Gmail, Flickr, Facebook, etc. all have full access to the data you store with them. Thus, they are not suitable for sensitive data. Even when you use them for less sensitive data, information asymmetry is increased. Being able to access their customer’s data puts companies under temptation and pressure to use it for other purposes than originally intended, and also increases the risk of it being accidentally exposed due to a bug or bad design (example).
Our encryption mechanism is one feature that lets Wuala stand out and also allows it to safely run in a distributed manner.
Online backup solutions usually chose the same approach to guarantee privacy. What sets us apart from others is that we offer this high level of privacy while we still let you share files with others. This unique proposition is possible thanks to our Cryptree key management system (research paper).
Services like Box.net, Dropbox, Gmail, Flickr, Facebook, etc. all have full access to the data you store with them. Thus, they are not suitable for sensitive data. Even when you use them for less sensitive data, information asymmetry is increased. Being able to access their customer’s data puts companies under temptation and pressure to use it for other purposes than originally intended, and also increases the risk of it being accidentally exposed due to a bug or bad design (example).
Our encryption mechanism is one feature that lets Wuala stand out and also allows it to safely run in a distributed manner.
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is there any guarantee for this encryption? without open source, nobody can check this.
blogger.com is strange.. o.O
Since it's Java, it might not be _that_ hard to still get to the source code if you really want... (haven't tried though) but I'm still constantly bugging the devs to release the relevant code and will continue to do so! ;-)
You can decompile the code, but I don't think that you can read it. Because the code is running through an obfuscator before it get's compiled ;-)
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