Encryption Question

[Gbyrd]

If you did not select to encrypt your drive. How is the data stored? Can someone read the data? It looks like gibberish on the drives themselves. Can you encrypt a drive after you already put data on it.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

It entirely depends on the provider.  For each provider, we use a slightly different format, based on that provider. 

 

Specifically, for certain providers (such as Google Drive, Amazon Cloud Drive, etc) we do obfuscate the data. Meaning we do some simple encryption on the data, if you don't enable full drive encryption. 

And by "simple encryption", I mean we use a very simple to "break" encryption, and each file has a NULL byte at the start. This is to prevent the provider from parsing the file and recategorizing it based on the file's header.   

 

For Amazon Cloud Drive, for instance, this should completely block it's ability to identify data from StableBit CloudDrive. 

 

Otherwise, the data is raw disk data, and won't show up as the files on the provider, but chunks of raw disk data.

[wid_sbdp]

AFAIK some services use encryption either way. Forcing encryption lets you have the key though. Also they use obfuscation on the files so while you could technically "look inside" a chunk, the chunk itself is still going to be a long string of random characters. But not using encryption doesn't mean like "file1.mkv" is just uploaded as "file1.mkv"

[Gbyrd]

AFAIK some services use encryption either way. Forcing encryption lets you have the key though. Also they use obfuscation on the files so while you could technically "look inside" a chunk, the chunk itself is still going to be a long string of random characters. But not using encryption doesn't mean like "file1.mkv" is just uploaded as "file1.mkv"

Yeah that was what i was hoping for. I was looking at this new thing Plex Cloud which puts in raw files into Amazon cloud and you can do exactly what this application does. But i do not like the idea of putting at the very least unObfuscated data on the cloud, for legal reasons.

[wid_sbdp]

Yeah that was what i was hoping for. I was looking at this new thing Plex Cloud which puts in raw files into Amazon cloud and you can do exactly what this application does. But i do not like the idea of putting at the very least unObfuscated data on the cloud, for legal reasons.

 

Plex Cloud doesn't do any sort of protection on the files sadly, so they're wide open to being seen by your provider. Kind of makes it pointless and I'm not sure why Plex is pushing for Plex Cloud when they know for 100% certainty it'll be used for pirated content and just cause a headache in customer service complaints that they can no longer access their files.

[Gbyrd]

It entirely depends on the provider.  For each provider, we use a slightly different format, based on that provider. 

 

Specifically, for certain providers (such as Google Drive, Amazon Cloud Drive, etc) we do obfuscate the data. Meaning we do some simple encryption on the data, if you don't enable full drive encryption. 

And by "simple encryption", I mean we use a very simple to "break" encryption, and each file has a NULL byte at the start. This is to prevent the provider from parsing the file and recategorizing it based on the file's header.   

 

For Amazon Cloud Drive, for instance, this should completely block it's ability to identify data from StableBit CloudDrive. 

 

Otherwise, the data is raw disk data, and won't show up as the files on the provider, but chunks of raw disk data.

 

Yeah made the mistake of not encrypting my Google drive, but hopefully its obfuscated enough to not be a big deal

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Plex Cloud doesn't do any sort of protection on the files sadly, so they're wide open to being seen by your provider. Kind of makes it pointless and I'm not sure why Plex is pushing for Plex Cloud when they know for 100% certainty it'll be used for pirated content and just cause a headache in customer service complaints that they can no longer access their files.

 

 

This may be complete paranoia, but this whole Plex Cloud thing seems like a honeypot sting operation. "find the pirates" by getting them to out themselves. 

 

 

 

Yeah made the mistake of not encrypting my Google drive, but hopefully its obfuscated enough to not be a big deal

 

The Google Drive Provider is definitely obfuscated. So yeah, shouldn't be a big deal.

[Gbyrd]

This may be complete paranoia, but this whole Plex Cloud thing seems like a honeypot sting operation. "find the pirates" by getting them to out themselves. 

 

 

 

 

The Google Drive Provider is definitely obfuscated. So yeah, shouldn't be a big deal.

Thanks,

 and seriously this plex cloud thing is a big honeypot. What do people even put on Plex, even BR rips of content you do own is illegal via ToS/ToU. People will put all their content on plex cloud. Amazon will see unencrypted data and then send DMCA takedowns. I was really interested in plex cloud cause it seemed better than using cloud drive. But after reading its unencrypted no thanks. Cloud drive works very well once it is all systems go. 

 

Plus plex is already having problems with amazon regarding this