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Comment by progbits | Hacker News Reader

Ctrl-f "zero" shows nothing on the homepage nor the linked pages I checked. Also zero knowledge has a very specific meaning in cryptography and I don't see how it applies here, or where the OP got this for the title.

Yes this is nitpicking but I think when it comes to cryptography you have to be precise.

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I think the term they meant is "end-to-end encrypted" (e.g. the service has zero knowledge of your notes' content, only your own devices).

Then again, even popular services like CloudFlare use that term wrong, e.g. their setting where traffic is encrypted client-to-cloudflare and then separately cloudflare-to-server is called "end-to-end" in their dashboard.

Once technical terms become marketing points, you can expect them to be used for a whole new variety of meanings.

Not to be nit-picky, but E2EE is not zero-knowledge. It's entirely possible for the data to be E2EE while the provider has all knowledge, partial knowledge or a little bit of knowledge of what you are transferring.

I have seen services market E2EE while not being truly zero knowledge, so it's important to watch out for that sneaky marketing lingo.

If the provider has all knowledge, I don't think it deserves to be called E2EE at all. E2EE implies (to me) that decryption doesn't happen until your message has reached the other end. Any decryption on the server/relay/middleman, even if re-encrypting, is not what I call E2EE.

I agree with you in principle, but being "E2EE" is just simply that - it's end-to-end encrypted. It says nothing as to who holds the encryption keys, and often times the host holds the key. Zero knowledge implies that the host has no knowledge (thus no keys) of your data.

I'm not even talking about who has the keys, or whether the server can decrypt. I'm saying that if the server is decrypting and then re-encrypting, it is not "end-to-end".

> Then again, even popular services like CloudFlare use that term wrong, e.g. their setting where traffic is encrypted client-to-cloudflare and then separately cloudflare-to-server is called "end-to-end" in their dashboard.

“Woopsie, we marketed that wrong hehe”. It’s “wrong” on purpose.

Man-in-the-Middle encryption just don't sell as well...

>Also zero knowledge has a very specific meaning in cryptography and I don't see how it applies here,

People are using "zero knowledge" in different contexts:

(1) ZKP terminology in cryptography : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof

(2) zero knowledge cloud service: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_service

This Notesnook is using meaning #(2).

>, or where the OP got this for the title.

View source of webpage has this:

  <title>Notesnook | Open source &amp; zero knowledge private note taking app</title>

Thanks. From your (2), makes me sad:

> The term "zero-knowledge" was popularized by backup service SpiderOak, which later switched to using the term "no knowledge" to avoid confusion with the computer science concept of zero-knowledge proof.

Regarding title, missed that as it was truncated on my phone, appologies to OP.

The home page title has the word zero knowledge, I guess?

Their GitHub has slightly more info regarding this, but I agree that stuff like this should have at least a page dedicated for it that explains how they've implemented their security.

> Notesnook is a free (as in speech) & open-source note-taking app focused on user privacy & ease of use. To ensure zero knowledge principles, Notesnook encrypts everything on your device using XChaCha20-Poly1305 & Argon2.

https://github.com/streetwriters/notesnook

As long as we’re walking down this road, you also don’t encrypt with Argon2. It’s a hashing function, specialized for passwords.

And chacha20-poly1305 is listed in the SSH MiTM issue.

https://www.freebsd.org/security/advisories/FreeBSD-SA-23:19...

Wireguard also uses ChaCha20-Poly1305, but I am not sure it's relevant? I believe that attack is specific to SSH:

"The attack exploits weaknesses in the specification of SSH paired with widespread algorithms, namely ChaCha20-Poly1305 and CBC-EtM, to remove an arbitrary number of protected messages at the beginning of the secure channel, thus breaking integrity."

[0] https://arstechnica.com/security/2023/12/hackers-can-break-s...

To be clear, I retrieved the title from the meta tags of the page, you can also see it as the title of the browser tab.

The pricing page includes the bullet point: "Zero knowledge encryption", fwiw.

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