Server: S3 as primary storage encryption security

[FlorentCoppint]

Hi,

When we set-up Nextcloud 17 with S3 as primary storage and we enable encryption, the encryption keys are stored on the S3 space.

What is the point of encrypting files on an unsecure place, and storing the encryption key at the same place ?

Will it be fixed ? Is there a workaround about this ?

Thank you.
Flo

[FlorentCoppint]

Nobody is concerned about this issue ? "S3 as primary storage" is supposed to be an "enterprise solution" ...

[Nils160988]

As pointed out in the documentation, serverside encryption does not prevent users' files from access by nextcloud administrators.
If you do not trust S3 (and its administrators/organisation), you should not place your primary storage there.

So: This is intentional behavior and no bug, I think.
At least, that has been my understanding. So better only use S3 as additional storage then.

[FlorentCoppint]

I agree it's not a bug, I didn't tag it.
Maybe we could imagine storing encryption keys on the Nextcloud server itself, and only encrypted data on S3. Or make it an option...
S3 as additional storage is not as easy to use for users, compared to primary storage (configured by Nextcloud admin)

[Miaourt]

What the...
I must agree I would be worried if using S3 mean giving keys to my file to S3 suppliers.

I trust myself and my server, but I don't trust Amazon or any S3 provider.

Encrypting the file is a way for me to have them securely stored and unreadable by thirds party, while still having their quite useful "unlimited capacity".

We should have a way to define where we want to store the keys imho, either on the database or on a federated configuration server if sharing the key is the point of this config

This make encryption a non feature in this case, what's the point of having a lock if the key is in the keyhole??

[leo-lb]

Very poor security design here. I am shocked.

[jmthackett]

I'm looking at this too and pretty confused for the same reasons as others. I'd like to be able to store the key in either the database, or a specific filesystem location.

[samzehnder]

I have not verified it, but have a look here, keys are encrypted with secret found in instance-config...