The dangers of a monoculture
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 6th Aug 2012 11:12 UTC
Apple Mat Honan got hacked, and lost all the data on his MacBook, iPad, and iPhone. How? Somebody broke into his iCloud account. Brute force attack? Simple password? No, not really - the hacker called Apple tech support, and convinced the person on the phone he was really Mat Honan. Apple then reset the iCloud password. The dangers of a monoculture, kids. Even Steve Wozniak has doubts about everything going into the cloud.
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No Cloud for me thanks.
by moondevil on Mon 6th Aug 2012 11:36 UTC
moondevil
Member since:
2005-07-08

As a firm believer in security of personal data, I prefer to have my data handled by native applications with regular backup schemes.

No way I am giving personal/business information to third parties, regardless what their terms of service state.

Reply Score: 11

RE: No Cloud for me thanks.
by nutt on Mon 6th Aug 2012 12:06 in reply to "No Cloud for me thanks."
nutt Member since:
2011-06-22

Cloud storage is probably ok if you have multiple clouds and run something like RAID6 on them. That way, if one or two clouds are taken down, wiped, or whatever, you still have your data. And conversely, if someone steals your data from one of the clouds they will not be able to use it.

Reply Parent Score: 3

Dr.Mabuse Member since:
2009-05-19

Call me paranoid, but I like to run EncFS over Dropbox, works rather well (in windows and linux!)

Reply Parent Score: 2

RE: No Cloud for me thanks.
by Lennie on Mon 6th Aug 2012 13:21 in reply to "No Cloud for me thanks."
Lennie Member since:
2007-09-22

I have no problems with the cloud, but I have very clear lines about what I want to put in the cloud.

Public data, can be stored in the cloud just fine. It's just like any webhosting service really.

Private data: like backups or syncing bookmarks and other browser settings get encrypted before they are stored in the cloud.

So for backup that means: duplicity/duplicati/deja-dup

For bookmarks, etc. it means: Firefox, which does encryption by default.

And I will also not use Facebook or similair to create an account on an other website for registering/logging in.

OpenID and BrowserID al ready solve that problem.

Reply Parent Score: 3

RE: No Cloud for me thanks.
by kaiwai on Mon 6th Aug 2012 13:53 in reply to "No Cloud for me thanks."
kaiwai Member since:
2005-07-06

As a firm believer in security of personal data, I prefer to have my data handled by native applications with regular backup schemes.

No way I am giving personal/business information to third parties, regardless what their terms of service state.


There is a reason why Apple doesn't allow synchronising of Keychain into the cloud but you'd be surprised at the number of Mac users who demand something that would make them incredibly vulnerable. I think the greater question that needs to be asked is why don't people have multiple passwords for different things? I have an entirely different password than for example the one I used for my banking when compared to one I have for for my Paypal - why do people insist on putting all their eggs into one basket?

Reply Parent Score: 3

Neolander Member since:
2010-03-08

I'd hazard the guess that it's hard for people to find and remember several robust passwords.

That's the main reason why I used no more than 3 distinct passwords on the web before I got around coding a password generator and manager that suits my taste with the help of Alfman.

Reply Parent Score: 3

Soulbender Member since:
2005-08-18

I think the greater question that needs to be asked is why don't people have multiple passwords for different things?


Probably because today pretty much every damn site requires that you have an account and it's a pain in the arse to keep track of all your account/passwords.
That said, keeping stuff like your bank password different from your facebook one is a good idea.

Reply Parent Score: 3