{"id":3183,"date":"2011-03-11T12:04:53","date_gmt":"2011-03-11T17:04:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=3183"},"modified":"2011-03-14T18:39:28","modified_gmt":"2011-03-14T23:39:28","slug":"dropbox-security","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/11\/dropbox-security\/","title":{"rendered":"Dropbox Mobile Less Secure Than Desktop"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/grepular.com\/Dropbox_Mobile_Less_Secure_Than_Dropbox_Desktop\">Mike Cardwell<\/a> found that, even though <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dropbox.com\/help\/27\">Dropbox&rsquo;s FAQ<\/a> said:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/www.dropbox.com\/help\/27\"><p>All transmission of file data and metadata occurs over an encrypted channel (SSL).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>the metadata was, in fact, not encrypted from the Android and iPhone clients. <a href=\"http:\/\/forums.dropbox.com\/topic.php?id=24507\">Indeed<\/a>, for mobile clients:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"http:\/\/forums.dropbox.com\/topic.php?id=24507\"><p>some limited file metadata (name of file, etc) are transmitted over HTTP for performance reasons.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This should either be changed or <a href=\"http:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/26\/dropbox\/\">clearly disclosed<\/a> and made a preference. The FAQ has since been changed to say:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/www.dropbox.com\/help\/27\"><p>All transmission of file data occurs over an encrypted channel (SSL).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Although, presumably, metadata from desktop clients is still encrypted, it would be nice to have this spelled out clearly.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dropbox.com\/developers\/docs\">Dropbox API<\/a> seems to use https, so it looks as though third-party clients, such as the <a href=\"http:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/09\/comparing-iphone-text-editors\/\">iPhone text editors<\/a> I compared, are not affected.<\/p>\n<p>Update (2011-03-14): Here&rsquo;s the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dropbox.com\/votebox\/4452\/enhanced-mobile-client-communication-security-encrypt-both-files-and-metadata-\">Votebox thread<\/a> for this issue.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mike Cardwell found that, even though Dropbox&rsquo;s FAQ said: All transmission of file data and metadata occurs over an encrypted channel (SSL). the metadata was, in fact, not encrypted from the Android and iPhone clients. Indeed, for mobile clients: some limited file metadata (name of file, etc) are transmitted over HTTP for performance reasons. This [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3183"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3194,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3183\/revisions\/3194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}