Show HN: Etebase – An open source and end-to-end encrypted Firebase alternative

Re:Show HN: Etebase – An open source and end-to-end encrypte... by ChrisMarshallNY on Wednesday November 11, 2020 @05:27PM (#25063755)

I sincerely wish you luck with this.

I wrote something similar, a couple of years ago[0], but it doesn't include encryption; it merely gives a place to add encryption. I didn't want to deal with the legalities of included encryption, and I think others can do far better than I (but it is quite secure, nonetheless[1]). It was really done, just to "retool" my architectural and engineering skills, as I was pivoting from being a manager, back to being a developer.

I am now using it as a backend for an app under development (currently closed-source). It has been working a treat.

But after the app has been released, I may encourage the folks to look at alternatives for the backend. I am not really into maintaining a server system. I like to stay on the app side of things.

[0] https://riftvalleysoftware.com/work/open-source-projects/#ba...

[1] https://riftvalleysoftware.com/BAOBAB/PDFs/Security.pdf (Downloads a PDF)

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Re:Show HN: Etebase – An open source and end-to-end encrypte... by tasn on Wednesday November 11, 2020 @06:09PM (#25064125)

Thank you for your kind words!

I think the encryption is the key differentiator here, at least for me. I don't want my data saved exposed on someone else's server, AKA the cloud.

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Re:Show HN: Etebase – An open source and end-to-end encrypte... by ChrisMarshallNY on Wednesday November 11, 2020 @06:17PM (#25064185)

The deal with mine, is the encryption is left to the client. The server just stores a binary "thing." That "thing" can be an encrypted envelope, managed by the client[s]. Since it's a closed-loop system, then a key could be shared programmatically, outside the purview of the server.

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Re:Show HN: Etebase – An open source and end-to-end encrypte... by tasn on Wednesday November 11, 2020 @06:20PM (#25064203)

Yeah, in Etebase the server also just sees "things", though it tries to make it easy on the client to only get what's changed and etc.

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Re:Show HN: Etebase – An open source and end-to-end encrypte... by fabrice_d on Wednesday November 11, 2020 @10:17PM (#25066018)

Just curious, how does that differ from a system like Firefox sync which is also using client side encryption?

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Re:Show HN: Etebase – An open source and end-to-end encrypte... by tasn on Thursday November 12, 2020 @02:16AM (#25067306)

I don't think Firefox sync makes it very easy for devs to build other encrypted applications. Even if they did however, there are a lot of challenges with encrypted applications that they just don't take care of. Not to mention that they are very we centric and don't have developer APIs in many languages.

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