[thecrash]

Your problem statement is effectively "I want to share access to my documents very informally with people who don't care to have any security practices, but still keep them secure"

There's another way of sharing in cryptpad though, which is for each user to create an identity/account. Once those you're collaborating with have accounts, documents and folders can be shared by granting access within cryptpad's UI. No secrets have to be circulated.

[jraph]

> Your problem statement is effectively "I want to share access to my documents very informally with people who don't care to have any security practices, but still keep them secure"

Well, that's certainly what tools like CryptPad and Signal target: privacy for the non expert.

OP' points are right, and I hope they get addressed at some point.

[hmsimha]

I've worked with a few orgs which have used cryptpad, and I'm sorry, but Cryptpad doesn't make it possible to share documents securely unless again, everyone in the org is able to follow security protocol to an exceptionally rare degree.

Even you seem to think sharing via identity somehow bypasses the problem, when in fact this just sends them a "notification" with a share link containing the same secret URL (not to mention, as far as I can tell, there's no way for them to add the document to their own drive, so if they want to access it later they either need to save the share link or find it in their notification panel under "notification history" which is super unintuitive).

And again, those secrets are stored in your browser history. In a group I was involved with, the workflow was to create documents and share them with others, or put the share link in a Signal group. Even if one were to try to tell everyone in the group that the link should only be opened in a browser that doesn't share its history with its vendor, clicking the link in Signal will happily just open it in which ever browser is configured as your system default anyway.

Cryptpad effectively gives you the rope and then ties it into the noose around your neck for you, while you're not looking.

Security theater is at best mildly dangerous in a more typical scenario where it's constructed around an application that isn't billed as a secure communication platform. When a tool advertised as user-friendly and privacy-enhancing is the subject of such theatrics, it's even more actively harmful because it instills a false sense of confidence. It would be like a safety helmet that explodes when the user grazes their head.

So to recap, if you care about big tech companies gaining access to your secure documents, the only way to use cryptpad in a remotely secure manner, in a group, is either by password protecting all documents with a strong password, or ensuring no one in your org ever opens a document in a browser with history syncing. And honestly, expecting the latter from 99% of groups that might use cryptpad is unreasonable, which is why I'm saying it's irresponsible of Cryptpad to even allow password-less document creation (without so much as showing users a glaring red danger notice beforehand).

The users are not primarily to blame for incorrect use of a software that's billed as privacy-preserving, when that software drops them off at the happy path and neglects to tell them, "by the way, we've booby-trapped the door to fire a footgun when opened unless you also turn the smaller knob on the far side with your other hand as you open it."

I realize the data exfiltration issues I mentioned are non-trivial to address (though by no means an immense project either), but I can't interpret the link situation as anything other than willful negligence, or worse, a honeypot; consider that users whose adversaries might include nation-state actors (for example, undocumented immigrants sharing resources with one another on how to access services while staying under the radar) are perhaps more exposed, because data brokers are more likely to deny state requests for data that can be seen as overly broad, whereas one specific type of data (browser history) on one domain becomes a pretty tightly scoped request.

[ldubost]

Your last paragraph is quite insulting to the work we do, suggesting intention to trap people ? Did I read this right ?

I'm not really sure i want to continue the conversation unless you retract this. Our team is working hard on many fronts and does not deserve to be treated like that.

If you believe it's critical that the "link situation" be resolved, where is the pull request, or even the specification of the necessary change ?

Ludovic

[hmsimha]

I think the work you've done with cryptpad, while impressive on many levels and, I'm assuming, motivated by a desire to make secure document collaboration more accessible, is actually putting people at increased risk due to how bad this issue with the share URLs is.

I attempted to disclose the issue responsibly (in other words, not as a github issue), and urged you to make passwords mandatory for documents, or at least default with a prominent warning displayed for users foregoing the password. The response I received indicated that Cryptpad didn't consider this to be a vulnerability, but that you'd welcome changes to improve documentation.

You asked where my PR was: I gladly would submit one if I didn't expect it to be closed based on the response I had received prior, but I don't think documentation changes would cut it.

I wasn't intending to make this personal and I definitely wasn't saying that you (or your team's) motivations were unambiguously malicious or deceptive. My last paragraph was perhaps overly dramatic, but my impression is that Cryptpad positions itself as a general-purpose e2ee document collaboration suite, and one of the use cases I associate with that positioning, one of the less strict ones if I'm honest, would be something like:

> empower laypeople to collaborate on documents with reasonable confidence that nation-state actors won't be able to passively surveil those documents.

which is a much softer use case to satisfy than, say, providing halfway-decent protection from active, targeted surveillance (the space I believe Signal to be in, and also the space I'd love Cryptpad to be in)

So if those aren't among the kinds of things y'all think about when designing Cryptpad, then I'd appreciate if you made your overall project goals and use cases more explicit. Of course there are other valid reasons to desire document security, they're just not ones I tend to spend as much time thinking about.

[ldubost]

Disclaimer: I'm the CEO of the company doing CryptPad.

The problem I have, is that you say the word "vulnerability" for CryptPad when we never promised to protect you from a badly configured computer.

If there is a vulnerability, it's unsecured browser syncing which would be exposing your browsing history to Google. Google Docs has anonymous links which are in that history too.

BTW I could not find any info about browser companies exposing the synced browser history. As far as I know It's encrypted on Chrome and Firefox. But maybe I'm wrong as I believe if people want to be sure why would they use browser sync ?

Note that in addition to passwords there are also Access configs where the server can block access to documents to specific users. This is an additional security which mitigates the issue of links that would be opened on a bad browser. Sharing links through CryptPad as also the recommended way to never have URLs opened by your browser.

When I mentioned PR, you could also fork and run your server with higher security settings.

If a team does not respond to your vision, you can indeed bitch about that team, or you can come and give more proof of your vision. Documentation also help ? Why not document that browser syncing would be risky for activists ?

So take this as a call to be constructive. Make a github issue and propose something that helps. Maybe indeed add a message and a link to more documentation about good and bad ways to use shared links.

About "> empower laypeople to collaborate on documents with reasonable confidence that nation-state actors won't be able to passively surveil those documents", did you read our white paper ?

Ludovic

[nunobrito]

Seems like Microsoft and Google employees have joined the room.

They might as well complain that cryptopad isn't secure because it is connected to electricity all the time. They'll never be satisfied, fortunately they are also relatively easy to spot.