[monokrome]

I think that recommending BTSync is a bit scary.

Instead of accounts and a potentially long brute-force process as provided by Dropbox, BTsync relies on a public and "secret" key having been generated. This seems fine and dandy until you realize that the concept of brute force is an applicable means of getting access to anyone's BTsync if they are using the standard tracker.

Given enough storage space and bandwidth, someone could just create any number of shared folders assigning them all a different set of keys (this doesn't need to be done one-at-a-time) and wait for data to fall into them.

Doesn't this completely sidestep the concept of the data being supposedly secure in BTsync?

[jamoes]

As long as the secret has enough bits, then the risk of collision is so negligible that it's basically zero in our finite world.

I think the concept of just how large some numbers are really sunk in for me when I read this article [1] from Bruce Schneier. One thing I learned was that it would require more energy than the total energy output of the sun just to power a computer to count to 2^256. Ultimately, this quote from that article sums up his point well:

> These numbers have nothing to do with the technology of the devices; they are the maximums that thermodynamics will allow. And they strongly imply that brute-force attacks against 256-bit keys will be infeasible until computers are built from something other than matter and occupy something other than space.

[1] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/09/the_doghouse_...