> If you can add devices without entering encryption info, how can it be properly E2E?
It can’t. I don’t know about FF, but if you can add a device without explicit approval of one of your existing provisioned devices it is what I call Fake E2EE.
You see different providers go to great lengths to do device local encryption etc but due to product requirements (“what if a user loses their device or forgets their passphrase”) they keep a copy of the key, yet slaps the e2ee label on their product. So now it’s just regular encryption at rest with all the risks (subpoenas, rogue employees, company gets acquired, new CEO starts drooling over data broker dollars etc), only with much more technical complexity since data now needs to be read-writable client side by different software versions, increasing the risk of corruption, data loss and bugs.
Password managers with true e2ee actually suffer from these corruption issues from time to time. But that’s a price that must be paid for the e2ee level of security. It’s not for everyone – I wished there was more honesty around this instead of diluting meaningful and precise terms.
Edit: seems like FF has e2ee, see sibling comment.
If the encryption info is derived from the password it can be done without visual encryption keys for the user. It is the case with Firefox Sync. They have no way to recover the data if you forget the password.
It can’t. I don’t know about FF, but if you can add a device without explicit approval of one of your existing provisioned devices it is what I call Fake E2EE.
You see different providers go to great lengths to do device local encryption etc but due to product requirements (“what if a user loses their device or forgets their passphrase”) they keep a copy of the key, yet slaps the e2ee label on their product. So now it’s just regular encryption at rest with all the risks (subpoenas, rogue employees, company gets acquired, new CEO starts drooling over data broker dollars etc), only with much more technical complexity since data now needs to be read-writable client side by different software versions, increasing the risk of corruption, data loss and bugs.
Password managers with true e2ee actually suffer from these corruption issues from time to time. But that’s a price that must be paid for the e2ee level of security. It’s not for everyone – I wished there was more honesty around this instead of diluting meaningful and precise terms.
Edit: seems like FF has e2ee, see sibling comment.