Synch with SpiderOak?

ronfeinman

I have just purchased 1Password for my iphone and have both a mac and windows computer, as well as an iphone. I would like to use it on my computers as well. Because of security concerns with Dropbox, I am using SpiderOak for both cloud backup and synching across platforms. SpiderOak works in a similar fashion to Dropbox, but everything is encrypted before being sent to the cloud, even the folder names.



I would like to buy a 5 seat version of 1Password and have it store its passwords in a folder on each computer that is synched by Spideroak. The folder will be unencrypted (by SpiderOak) on each computer. Can I do this and have each computer's 1Password files synched with each other as well as my iphone? I'd like to be able to change or add a password on any computer or my iphone and have the changes show up on the other devices.



[b]Bonus question[/b]: can I have two separate sets of passwords with one Family pack? That is, can i set up one folder with passwords for general use and a separate folder with passwords for my own use (for items like my checking account etc)?



Thanks.



Ron

khad

Welcome to the forums, Ron! Thanks for asking about this.



Could you help me understand what security concerns you have syncing your 1Password data via Dropbox? The recent news was a simple case of password reuse. It was not a breach, hack, or exploit of Dropbox. Here's the full story:



[url="http://blog.agilebits.com/2012/07/31/password-reuse-dropbox/"]http://blog.agilebit...-reuse-dropbox/[/url]



From the moment we designed the Agile Keychain data format we ensured that it was able to withstand an attack should your data fall into the wrong hands, either as a result of a Dropbox breach or if someone physically stole your computer. As such, we use 128-bit AES encryption to protect your sensitive 1Password data as well as many other mechanisms to stop an attacker from ever accessing your information and we detail this here:



[url="http://help.agilebits.com/1Password3/cloud_storage_security.html"]http://help.agilebit...e_security.html[/url]



So, as long as you use a secure master password that you don't use elsewhere, your 1Password data is incredibly safe even when stored on a service like Dropbox. If you're not sure about the strength of your master password, please do take a look at our recent blog post on this:



[url="http://blog.agilebits.com/2011/06/toward-better-master-passwords/"]http://blog.agilebit...ster-passwords/[/url]



The short answer to “Have you considered X as an alternative sync solution” is “Yes” for every value of X that people have asked about. We have considered them, and have had to reject them for various technical reasons.



Each item in your 1Password data is stored in its own, separate, file. This is great for syncing in that it means that only the changes need to sync and this can be done by file and folder syncing. This not only makes syncing faster and cheaper, it also makes it much more reliable and robust against potential data corruption. But this also means that 1Password needs to read lots of different files quickly as it runs. Dropbox does fast syncing while storing the local files on the native local file systems, allowing it to function properly.



As an illustration, an alternative such as WebDAV (which we worked on extensively but had to abandon before we moved to Dropbox) provides a file system abstraction layer that is just too slow for 1Password. It can hang when we try to access some file that it hasn’t cached properly. Also WebDAV isn’t designed for updating many files is quick succession. It’s not that WebDAV is bad, but it isn’t suitable for how we would use it.



Everything else we’ve looked at (and we have looked at many things) suffers not only from the same problems we saw with WebDAV, but they also lack usable APIs for all the platforms we need to support. It may be possible, for example, to sync data to an Android or iOS device using SugarSync, Wuala, SpiderOak, etc., but it isn’t possible to sync that data in a way that would make it available to 1Password on those devices.



We are very much looking at services like Google Drive and Microsoft SkyDrive. At first glance it appears that they do have some of the crucial technical characteristics that we need (which so far only Dropbox has had).



What I can say at this point is that these are initially more promising than other sync services that we've looked at. The most crucial criterion is that on the desktop the files are genuinely stored on the local, native, file system. Google Drive and Microsoft SkyDrive appear to do that. But there are other criteria that will take more time to evaluate.



So I do have to ask for patience. It takes time to go from "initially promising" to "more thoroughly investigated" to "developing code to test" to "testing internally" to "beta testing" to "ready for users". I can't even promise a timeline on "more thoroughly investigated", but I can certainly let you know that we are aware of these and other potential options.



As for multiple data files, different [b]users[/b] can certainly have different data files, but 1Password is not designed for switching data files "on the fly." You will likely run into problems with the browser extensions if you attempt to do this as their sandboxed data stores are synced to the main application via a background process which is authenticated only to a single data file. This is obviously not a problem if the different data files are for different users as each user also has different browser extension data stores located within their respective user directories.



If we can be of further assistance, please let us know. We are always here to help!

ronfeinman

thanks for the reply.



As to your reply to my second question, I'd like a follow up:



you said:



"As for multiple data files, different [b]users[/b] can certainly have different data files, but 1Password is not designed for switching data files "on the fly." You will likely run into problems with the browser extensions if you attempt to do this as their sandboxed data stores are synced to the main application via a background process which is authenticated only to a single data file. This is obviously not a problem if the different data files are for different users as each user also has different browser extension data stores located within their respective user directories."





I want to be absolutely certain I understand. Can multiple users share the same 1Password database? For example:

User 1 has a Mac,

User 2 has a Windows PC, and

User 3 has has an iphone.



Suppose, alternately



User 1 has a Mac and has an iphone

User 2 has a Windows PC and has an iphone



is it possible to have one common password database for all 3 users and have that databse sync among all devices? (I'll use dropbox if I have to).



thanks.



ron

khad

Yes, absolutely. You can share a single data file across multiple platforms. The bit that you quoted from my post above was referring specifically to "user [i]accounts[/i]" within an operating system like Windows or OS X.



Sharing is either "all or nothing". If you share the same data file then it is just the same as syncing for [b]one[/b] user across those platforms: one data file, one master password, shared by all [human] users.



There is not a way to share only [i]parts[/i] of the data with different human users.



Dropbox is the recommended sync solution (and the only one supported between Windows and iOS). Here is our Dropbox sync setup guide:



http://help.agilebits.com/1Password3/cloud_syncing_with_dropbox.html



Let me know if you have any other questions.



Cheers!