Folder / File Permissions

[araccoon]

I would like to see the ability for a multi-user sync to allow multiple file owners, each file having its own read-only or write permissions.

 

A typical scenario would be a sync shared with multiple people, each having permission to contribute files to the sync.  Users who contribute files would only be allowed to modify their own files, and not the files other people contributed to the sync, unless specifically given that permission to other individuals or everybody.

 

Unfortunately, in order to contribute files today, those same users have the ability to modify all other files in the sync.  This has the potential for abuse, where a single user with permission to contribute can also contaminate all other files.

[ChrisH]

How do you authenticate a user? How do you distribute the access control lists? How do you control who can change them? How do you make sure every BTSync client does this user authentication and honors the ACLs?

[ehterial]

This would be very powerful upgrade that I'd like to see too. Maybe the title should have been better, or the problem put from the aspect of multiple user management.

 

Anyway, in reply to the thread - you could treat ACL as a separate, say hidden file with own secret (let's call it "user secret"). Only master user could change an ACL, so it would be a read only file.

 

Each ACL would then contain list of other "standard" secrets which can be R or R/W secrets for different folders. It doesn't matter if someone can still access folders with the "standard secrets". (Or the other option is that all folders would be accessible only with the combination of "user" and "standard" secret.)

"Standard" secrets which are subset of a "user secret" could also be changed dynamically to prevent misuse by third party.