I was pointed to this list as the place to raise my concerns by an acquaintance at Mozilla after I expressed my unhappiness about the new FF sync. I hope that is true. I have looked over the complete archive and there is no discussion of the decision to move to a new sync model. The list appears to have been created post-decision.
I believe Mozilla is making a very bad decision in changing FF sync. The onepw white paper (https://github.com/mozilla/fxa-auth-server/wiki/onepw-protocol) identifies a number of weaknesses several of them arising due to storage on the server of the "wrapped" sync encryption key. Since sync will be storing all my other passwords, any weakening is a grave concern. Has Mozilla read the newspapers lately? Has Mozilla heard of the NSA? In this age of mass surveillance by powerful government agencies backed up by secretive court orders any cloud service that stores the encryption key for my data in *any* form on it servers is a threat. The paper then claims "These weaknesses are the result of compromises. The features obtained in this bargain are: recover account data (with the password) after losing your only device add a new device without access to an old device use slow/old clients (rather than doing expensive scrypt stretching client-side) generalized Firefox Accounts, with more features than just Sync" The first and second are both possible with old sync provided one has the "recovery key". I have personally done the second. As for the third, I never noticed any particular delay on the mobile devices I have sync'ed or on my old and slow XP system. That leaves the last. In order to provide this feature of questionable utility, Mozilla is requiring me to go through an immense amount of trouble to switch to the new sync while weakening my security. It would be *much* less trouble and more secure to simply create another account to get "more features." Since Mozilla has managed to time arrival of this feature with Microsoft ending support for XP, I don't even have the option continuing to use old sync because I I have to get a new computer and you have removed the UI for connecting a new device to old sync. The strong security of FF sync is one of the main reasons I use FF and something that applied pressure on Mozilla's competitors to do likewise. The link I followed from the pop-up notice in FF mobile beta about new sync says nothing about security. This makes one think Mozilla is no longer concerned about sync security, forces people to hunt for further information, and it weakens the pressure on Mozilla's competitors. I would have preferred Mozilla invested the time in providing Thunderbird with the same robust sync capability as Firefox with all my contact information encrypted. Please kill this new sync or at a minimum continue support for old sync including leaving the UI in FF so new clients can still be added. Regards -Mark -- 注意：この電子メールには、株式会社エイチアイの機密情報が含まれている場合 が有ります。正式なメール受信者では無い場合はメール複製、 再配信または情 報の使用を固く禁じております。エラー、手違いでこのメールを受け取られまし たら削除を行い配信者にご連絡をお願いいたし ます. NOTE: This electronic mail message may contain confidential and privileged information from HI Corporation. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure, photocopying, distribution or use of the contents of the received information is prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender immediately and permanently delete this message and all related copies.
_______________________________________________ Sync-dev mailing list [email protected] https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/sync-dev
