Mega, the new MegaUpload, to launch on January 19

http://kim.com/mega/

by sgarbi • 14 years ago

92 49 14 years ago

kim.com

GotAnyMegadeth• 14 years ago

Bit annoying that that button resizes...

kavaliero• 14 years ago

I agree !

sgarbi3• 14 years ago

I didn't even notice there was a hidden message triggered by the mouseover..... I remember that once this practice was discouraged by many usability recommendations!

manojlds• 14 years ago

I thought it was pretty clear with the hand mouse cursor to the bottom right.

tugs• 14 years ago

Check out the jitter if you leave your mouse just to the left of the hand.

ferongr• 14 years ago

This doesn't happen in Firefox so I'd assume it's a bug of the browser.

narag• 14 years ago

In the past, securely storing and transferring confidential information required the installation of dedicated software. The new Mega encrypts and decrypts your data transparently in your browser, on the fly. You hold the keys to what you store in the cloud, not us.

It seems a good idea to me, maybe because I thought of it before :-) I'm not sure how well they will monetize it. I've read that economies come from detecting duplicates and archiving contents just once. But from the customer POV, that would be a strong feature.

BrokenPipe3• 14 years ago

Well encryption changes this. Assuming the key is in the hand of the user (which if it isn't kind of breaks the full point of encryption in this case) then each file will have a different digest and won't be detected as a duplicate.

Is there a way to store files encrypted with different data and detect they are the same file ? If there was, wouldn't this allow LEO to verify this and issue DCMA notices ?

thefreeman• 14 years ago

I believe if you could verify two separately encrypted files were the same it would defeat the purpose of encryption completely. By definition a secure encryption system cannot allow this.

marios• 14 years ago

You can do deduplication on chunks of the file. AFAIK, this is what cyphertite[1] does. Split each file in 256KB chunks, store their checksum and match those against a db do avoid resending / copying the same data over and over again.

I haven't tested cyphertite, but I've been meaning too. I mean, Ryan McBride is involved in the project as well as other OpenBSD devs. I'm hoping it has the same level of polish as OpenBSD.

[1] https://www.cyphertite.com/

pornel• 14 years ago

You can encrypt file with a crypto hash of its contents (e.g. `key=sha1(file)`).

That's a nice catch-22, as you need contents of the file to obtain the key to decrypt it.

Deduplication could be even more effective if the file was first split into variable-size content-dependent blocks using rolling hash (like rsync does) and then each block was encrypted this way separately (this way same MP3s with different ID Tags would still be mostly deduplicated).

Of course the more you make deduplication easier the more you indirectly disclose about contents of the file, so this is a security/privacy trade-off.

abemassry• 14 years ago

I did something very similar with https://truefriender.com/ with a shared key and a private key. If you added a friend you would have the shared key and could then decrypt the content. The content however was invisible to me. I couldn't monetize or get people interested, but I learned a lot from it.

graue2• 14 years ago

That's cool, I had an idea to do something like that:

For each piece of content (e.g. a photo or video), generate a ~32-byte random string, and symmetrically encrypt the content using that random string as the key. Then encrypt the random string N times using each of your N friends' public keys and give them the result. That way you control access per-item, people you unfriend can't decrypt content you post after the unfriending, and the content itself only has to get encrypted and stored once.

Is that how your thing works? Was it successful from a technical perspective?

jakozaur• 14 years ago

False start, http://mega.co.nz/ will launch on January 19.

dutchbrit2• 14 years ago

What's new about this exactly? This was posted a few months back.

Ps. You can access it here too, http://mega.co.nz/

Their me.ga domain was taken away from them.

mikegioia• 14 years ago

There's something unsettling about "Mega Conz"

dutchbrit2• 14 years ago

No pun intended... :-)

nextstep• 14 years ago

This is exciting. Kim also tweeted that each user gets 50GB of storage for free.

https://twitter.com/kimdotcom/status/291936750580953088

joeblau• 14 years ago

I'm looking more forward to this than I was to the Facebook announcement. I also interested in seeing what Kimble will roll out.

ramayac• 14 years ago

Now all they need, it's a client like DB for PC, Android and iOS, and were done.

ma2rten• 14 years ago

"Before, we operated only a handful of storage nodes located in expensive premium data centers. Now, thanks to encryption, we can connect a large number of hosting partners around the world without worrying about privacy breaches."

Was privacy really ever their main concern ?

grecy• 14 years ago

> Was privacy really ever their main concern ?

I expect it will be with the authorities breathing so hard down their necks, and the questionable legality of the files users will likely upload.

axusgrad• 14 years ago

This is on their "How to become a hosting partner" page (http://kim.com/mega/#/hosting):

>Unfortunately, we can't work with hosting companies based in the United States. Safe harbour for service providers via the Digital Millennium Copyright Act has been undermined by the Department of Justice with its novel criminal prosecution of Megaupload. It is not safe for cloud storage sites or any business allowing user-generated content to be hosted on servers in the United States or on domains like .com / .net. The US government is frequently seizing domains without offering service providers a hearing or due process.

mcantelon• 14 years ago

>Was privacy really ever their main concern?

It's a pretext for hiding what content is allowable for download to protect them from liability.

level09• 14 years ago

>"Powered by Instra"

What does Instra provide exactly ? I used them for domains but I don't really know if they also provide some good hosting infrastructure.

mwilcox• 14 years ago

According to NBR they provide "expert product, billing and technical support services to Mega."

http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/nz-company-named-key-mega-partn...

BayAreaDev• 14 years ago

The whole Mega.com is in-your-face thing Kim is doing with authorities.

The real bone with megaupload was, authorities held megaupload responsible for what it hosted - and Megaupload could not deny what they had on their servers (copyrighted stuff) - so the responsibility and liability lied with megaupload and caused its downfall.

With mega.com - the game is, mega.com will claim we don't know what is on our servers (since its encrypted at browser) so we can't be held liable for it - and this will stick!

I read somewhere comment that - its doesn't matter how strong the encryption is for mega.com users - all mega.com need it as a shield from legal troubles.

Clever!

sgarbi3• 14 years ago

wasn't the content encrypted on MegaUpload then?

Sunlis• 14 years ago

It may have been, but even if it was the encryption was likely done server-side. If I'm understanding this correctly, they will now be encrypting data before it leaves your browser. That way their servers never see the true data, so they can't be held accountable for what users are uploading.

In the previous model of receiving data then possible encoding it, they have full access to the raw data uploaded and are responsible for policing the legality of the files being uploaded.

bdcs• 14 years ago

Does anyone care to speculate on how payments will be processed? Payment networks seem to be the weak link...

EGreg• 14 years ago

Now this is how you do a "Mega launch". From the man who "can't do small".

Mega, the new MegaUpload, to launch on January 19

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