Jungle Disk is both the name of an online backup software service and a privately held data security company. It was one of the first backup services to use

cloud storage Cloud storage is a model of computer data storage in which the digital data is stored in logical pools, said to be on "the cloud". The physical storage spans multiple servers (sometimes in multiple locations), and the physical environment is t ...

and

Amazon S3 Amazon S3 or Amazon Simple Storage Service is a service offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that provides object storage through a web service interface. Amazon S3 uses the same scalable storage infrastructure that Amazon.com uses to run its e- ...

. In 2009 after being acquired by

Rackspace Rackspace Technology, Inc. is an American cloud computing company based in Windcrest, Texas, an inner suburb of San Antonio, Texas. The company also has offices in Blacksburg, Virginia, and Austin, Texas, as well as in Australia, Canada, United ...

the service added Rackspace Cloud Files. The name is a word association as the

Amazon rainforest The Amazon rainforest, Amazon jungle or ; es, Selva amazónica, , or usually ; french: Forêt amazonienne; nl, Amazoneregenwoud. In English, the names are sometimes capitalized further, as Amazon Rainforest, Amazon Forest, or Amazon Jungle. ...

is a Jungle and Disk is a common shorthand for a

hard disk drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magnet ...

Backup service overview

Jungle Disk backup is a monthly subscription software service that supports laptops, desktops, and servers for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

, and

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

operating systems. Data is backed up to an online disk using either a continuous backup (aka. sync) or scheduled to back up of selected files, folders, or a everything on a system. Data can be accessed from the software client, a web browser, or mobile devices running Android or

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...

. It also provides a

WebDAV WebDAV (Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning) is a set of extensions to the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which allows user agents to collaboratively author contents ''directly'' in an HTTP web server by providing facilities for concu ...

server for integration with other applications. Customers can protect their data using AES-256

encryption In cryptography, encryption is the process of encoding information. This process converts the original representation of the information, known as plaintext, into an alternative form known as ciphertext. Ideally, only authorized parties can decip ...

with their own key so even Jungle Disk employees cannot access any records. Each subscription includes 10 gigabytes of storage with pay-as-you-go for additional data.

History

Jungle Disk was founded in

Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...

by Dave Wright in 2006. On October 22, 2008, Jungle Disk entered into an agreement to be acquired by Rackspace Hosting, Inc. Rackspace purchased Jungle Disk in order to expand their cloud hosting services. After the acquisition integration Dave left Rackspace to found

SolidFire NetApp, Inc. is an American hybrid cloud data services and data management company headquartered in San Jose, California. It has ranked in the Fortune 500 from 2012–2021. Founded in 1992 with an IPO in 1995, NetApp offers cloud data services ...

and then Jungle Disk was relocated to

San Antonio ("Cradle of Freedom") , image_map = , mapsize = 220px , map_caption = Interactive map of San Antonio , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = United States , subdivision_type1= U.S. state, State , subdivision_name1 = Texas , s ...

in 2010. The pace of development slowed down as Rackspace focused on its Cloud infrastructure software platform which became

OpenStack OpenStack is a free, open standard cloud computing platform. It is mostly deployed as infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) in both public and private clouds where virtual servers and other resources are made available to users. The software plat ...

. In 2013, Rackspace revived Jungle Disk customer support going from ticket only service to include phone, chat and ticketing. On January 5, 2016, Jungle Disk spun out of Rackspace US, Inc. and is now a privately held company headquartered in San Antonio, TX. On December 5, 2017, Jungle Disk announced it acquired SafetyNet, the first backup for QuickBooks Online, from Jobber. In May 2022, it acquired online backup company

ElephantDrive ElephantDrive is a storage virtualization service used primarily as an Remote backup service, online backup tool, but also as a Remote Access Service, remote access service/collaboration tool. The service runs on Microsoft Windows, Windows, Macin ...

Criticism

The Jungle Disk client software did not receive an update from 2012-2014 and then while part of the Cloud Office portfolio a new version was released in December 2015. On June 3, 2011,

Colin Percival Colin A. Percival (born 1980) is a Canadian computer scientist and computer security researcher. He completed his undergraduate education at Simon Fraser University and a doctorate at the University of Oxford. While at university he joined the F ...

, owner of

Tarsnap Tarsnap is a secure online backup service for UNIX-like operating systems, including BSD, Linux, and OS X. It was created in 2008 by Colin Percival. Tarsnap encrypts data, and then stores it on Amazon S3. Service The service is designed for eff ...

(a competitor of Jungle Disk), identified two potential weaknesses in Jungle Disk's security: * The lack of a

Message Authentication Code In cryptography, a message authentication code (MAC), sometimes known as a ''tag'', is a short piece of information used for authenticating a message. In other words, to confirm that the message came from the stated sender (its authenticity) and ...

means that file corruption (accidental or deliberate) or arbitrary file content insertions"If the people running the underlying storage service (Amazon S3 or Rackspace Cloud Files) know the contents of a file stored via Jungle Disk, they could transform it into anything they want — planting files which are dangerous (e.g., viruses) or even illegal (e.g., child pornography). " Percival 2011 will not be detected if the attacker can bypass Amazon or Rackspace security and directly modify data in S3 or Cloud Files. * The use of MD5 as a

Key derivation function In cryptography, a key derivation function (KDF) is a cryptographic algorithm that derives one or more secret keys from a secret value such as a master key, a password, or a passphrase using a pseudorandom function (which typically uses a crypto ...

makes it computationally feasible to perform a brute-force attack on a Jungle Disk password.

References

External links

* {{Official website, http://jungledisk.com/
Jungle Disk Blog

Review in PC Magazine

Backup software File hosting Cloud storage S3

Backup service overview

History

Criticism

See also

References

External links