Dropbox Archives - John Sileo, Cyber Security Training

Posts tagged "Dropbox"

After Dropbox Breach, Is It Safe to Use? (Snowden Would Say No)

Did Edward Snowden Actually Comment on the Dropbox Breach? No.

Almost as fast as every media source out there could jump on the “Yet Another Breach” bandwagon and report that Dropbox had been hacked, the company was denying it. So let’s play a little game of true or false to try to sort out fact from fiction:

Statement: Hackers were able to access logins and passwords of Dropbox users and then leaked 400 account passwords and usernames on to the site Pastebin.

True.

Statement: The usernames and passwords referenced in these articles were stolen from unrelated services, not Dropbox. Attackers then used these stolen credentials to try to log in to sites across the Internet, including Dropbox.

True. (In fact that is a direct quote from the Dropbox blog of October 13, 2014 in which they bluntly proclaim “Dropbox wasn’t hacked”.)

Dropbox a Crystal Ball of Cloud Computing Pros & Cons

Dropbox is a brilliant cloud based service (i.e., your data stored on someone else’s server) that automatically backs up your files and simultaneously keep the most current version on all of your computing devices (Mac and Windows, laptops, workstations, servers, tablets and smartphones). It is highly efficient for giving you access to everything from everywhere while maintaining an off-site backup copy of every version of every document.

And like anything with that much power, there are risks. Using this type of syncing and backup service without understanding the risks and rewards is like driving a Ducati motorcycle without peering into the crystal ball of accidents that take the lives of bikers every year. If you are going to ride the machine, know your limits.

This week, Dropbox appears to have altered their user agreement (without any notice to its users), making it a FAR LESS SECURE SERVICE. Initially, their privacy policy stated: