Dropbox acquires Boxcryptor. What will happen to all those files that have been encrypted?

[riccardo1981]

Hi

As most will know, dropbox has purchased boxcryptor.
At this point my question is, what will happen to all those files that have been encrypted with boxcryptor ? Should they all be decrypted and wait for communication on how the transaction will be handled by Dropbox ?
Boxcryptor was used to encrypt files using other cloud services, will this change ?

Thank you very much
Riccardo

[HRS2403]

As detailed above, I was able to get Boxcryptor working on an offline Mac in Local Account mode. I can even sign out, then sign in while still offline, so the Boxcryptor mothership does not have to be available. Thanks to @Martin R.19 for his advice.

Now, I have a second Mac that I also use with Boxcryptor-encrypted files. I converted to Local Account mode on that Mac as well, with both computers using the same key file.

The good news is that I can have Dropbox sync the files, just as always, and still use Boxcryptor on both, now in Local Account mode. Everything works exactly as before, so it's as if Boxcryptor is staying around indefinitely. As mentioned by others above, this will work until it doesn't, so this is not a great solution for the long term. Realizing this, though, pending full integration of Boxcryptor into Dropbox, at least I don't have to completely redo my entire security workflow immediately.

[apfund]

Thanks for initiating this discussion and asking questions about the Boxcryptor integration. 

I'm Andrea, product manager for our native end-to-end encryption solution. I can confirm that we are working on this product (zero knowledge encryption, natively integrated with Dropbox) for business customers. While I can't confirm a specific timeline or roadmap at the moment, I want to assure you that we are aware of your need for this native integration. Also, we (and especially I personally) read your comments/wishes/ideas and all feedback shared in this forum. 

[Concerned Citizen]

Hi all. Glad to hear people are having success testing boxcryptor install on a fresh system to ensure we can access our files after March even when the main BC site goes down. However, we still have two looming problems by my reckoning. The first was mentioned previously; Apple updates OSX in a way that is incompatible with the client, and we know the client is EOL. But I would strongly encourage everyone to consider this second point. Did you actually decrypt all your files away from BC? Did you actually run a recursive search over the filesystem looking for any filenames in kanji? I always thought that was a clever trick BC used for filename encryption by leveraging the namespace of Unicode or UTF-32 or whatever it is and using printable Japanese characters that encoded English characters underneath. But now, is everyone sure you decrypted everything? How did you search for any remaining encrypted files? The official recommendation was simply to copy every file in BC to an unencrypted volume and sure that would work. But I didn't have enough storage around to do that, so I tried to go directory by directory hunting for encrypted stragglers. How does one even write a recursive grep for the possible character set BC uses? Has anyone else solved this problem? I've posted this concern before but no one seems to know.

[romualpiecyk]

I decrypted everything I had in both Dropbox and other locations. It was a painful process. Alot of errors along the way, leaving you with half completed folders. Most efficient way for me personally was to decrypt one folder at a time, even down into subfolders  for very large folders. Took a few days to do.

[apfund]

Hi, 

Since all encrypted Boxcryptor files end with .bc , you can simply do a grep filtering by that file extension:

cd <THE FOLDER YOU WANT TO START YOUR SEARCH FROM>
grep -r -i --include='*.bc' \.

Let me know if there are any questions!

[Concerned Citizen]

apdund that’s awesome! Exactly what I was hoping for. Thanks.

[Concerned Citizen]

And, just to close the loop on this, I was able to use that grep and it surfaced about half a dozen directories in dark corners of my Dropbox volume that were still encrypted with Boxcryptor.  Knowing I verifiably decrypted everything 100% gives me a lot more peace of mind.  I am finally ready for BC to (sadly) go away.

[chrissos]

@Andrea,
So good to see you engaged in the discussion but still terribly disappointing to see the timing of everything as well as hear that Boxcryptor will be abandoning personal or family account zero knowledge support. I’ve been a Dropbox personal user for many years but I also run a Software company. This is not how to treat customers and really soured my opinion of the company such that I am abandoning (sadly) the use for personal, moving away from my consideration for our business, and withdrawing any recommendation I formerly had for the software. Sounds like you’ll have a great product but need to work hard to regain trust. Again, great move to chime in with the help and all the best as things move forward.

[apfund]

@chrissos Thank you very much for your open and honest words. I can assure you that our team is working hard on the native integration of end-to-end encryption and will inform the community as soon as the new feature is available. I would be happy if you would try the feature again once it is available and give it another chance.

[njwolfegang]

That is my question too.  i havent been able to get any answers from dropbox.  Hopefully someone here can help. i want to continue using an encryption service when transferring files to and from dropbox