Wuala was a secure

online file storage A file-hosting service, cloud-storage service, online file-storage provider, or cyberlocker is an internet hosting service specifically designed to host user files. It allows users to upload files that could be accessed over the internet afte ...

file synchronization File synchronization (or syncing) in computing is the process of ensuring that computer files in two or more locations are updated via certain rules. In ''one-way file synchronization'', also called mirroring, updated files are copied from a sour ...

, versioning and

backup In information technology, a backup, or data backup is a copy of computer data taken and stored elsewhere so that it may be used to restore the original after a data loss event. The verb form, referring to the process of doing so, is "back up", w ...

service originally developed and run by Caleido Inc. It is now part of

LaCie LaCie (; English: "The Company") is an American-French computer hardware company specializing in external hard drives, RAID arrays, optical drives, Flash Drives, and computer monitors. The company markets several lines of hard drives with a ca ...

, which is in turn owned by

Seagate Technology Seagate Technology Holdings plc is an American data storage company. It was incorporated in 1978 as Shugart Technology and commenced business in 1979. Since 2010, the company has been incorporated in Dublin, Ireland, with operational headquart ...

. The service stores files in data centres that are provided by Wuala in multiple European countries (France, Germany, Switzerland). An earlier version also supported distributed storage on other users' machines, however this feature has been dropped. On 17 August 2015 Wuala announced that it was discontinuing its service and that all stored data would be deleted on 15 November 2015. Wuala recommended a rival cloud storage startup,

Tresorit Tresorit is a cloud storage service with end-to-end encryption. Founded in 2011, Tresorit closed an €11.5M Series B financing round in 2018 and was featured on FT1000 by Financial Times 2020 as the fifth fastest-growing cybersecurity company i ...

, as an alternative to its remaining customers.

History

Most research and development occurred at the

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology The Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology are two institutes of higher education in Switzerland (part of the ETH Domain): * Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne Swiss may refer to: * the adjectival form of Switzerland *Swiss people ...

(ETH) in

Zürich Zürich () is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zürich. It is located in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zürich. As of January 2020, the municipality has 43 ...

. 14 August 2008 :An "open beta"-java-applet, available from the website, could be run from a

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on ...

. 19 September 2008 :The Wuala Webstart project was registered on SourceForge.net. 26 October 2008 :An

Alpha release A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...

REST Rest or REST may refer to: Relief from activity * Sleep ** Bed rest * Kneeling * Lying (position) * Sitting * Squatting position Structural support * Structural support ** Rest (cue sports) ** Armrest ** Headrest ** Footrest Arts and entert ...

API, at a very early stage of development, supported

HTTP GET The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web, w ...

requests for content that was either public, or shared through a keyed hyperlink. 16 December 2008 :The Uniform Resource Locator changed from http://wua.la/ to http://www.wuala.com/ and files that were public, or shared through a keyed hyperlink, were made accessible through web browsers. 19 March 2009 :

announced a merger with Caleido AG. Wuala described the merger as being between Wuala and LaCie (not Caleido AG and LaCie). 5 January 2010 :Post-merger announcement of the first joint products. 23 May 2011 :All pro features - backup, sync, file versioning and time travel - are available for everyone at no cost 28 September 2011 :The "trade storage" feature was discontinued. 11 June 2014 :The storage plan was shifted to a paid-only service 31 October 2014 :Wuala announced that existing free-only storage would be terminated at the end of 2014 and customers wishing to save their data should migrate away or purchase a paid plan 17 August 2015 :Wuala announced that it would allow no further renewals or purchase of storage. The service will transition to read-only on 30 September 2015 and all stored data will be deleted on 15 November 2015

Features

Any registered user can: * keep files private * share files with other registered users * share files with unregistered users, through a keyed

hyperlink In computing, a hyperlink, or simply a link, is a digital reference to data that the user can follow or be guided by clicking or tapping. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text wit ...

* publish files *

* file versioning. Registered and unregistered users can: receive

streaming media Streaming media is multimedia that is delivered and consumed in a continuous manner from a source, with little or no intermediate storage in network elements. ''Streaming'' refers to the delivery method of content, rather than the content it ...

. When a user adds a file to Wuala, or saves changes to a file that is served by Wuala, the user's local copy of file is: first encrypted, then chunked into redundant fragments using Reed-Solomon error correction codes. The fragments are then uploaded to the data centers.

Storage

Wuala offered free accounts that had 5 GB of storage for no charge. As of 11 June 2014 they shifted to a paid-only service. As of the end of 2014 they will no longer support any form of free-only storage, shifting entirely to a payment based usage model. Users of joint products may start with greater amounts of storage for a limited period: with a LaCie external

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 ...

, 10 GB for one year or with a LaCie

USB flash drive A USB flash drive (also called a thumb drive) is a data storage device that includes flash memory with an integrated USB interface. It is typically removable, rewritable and much smaller than an optical disc. Most weigh less than . Since firs ...

, 4 GB for two years. Additional storage may be bought. As of June 2014, the referral system was shut down due to the new paid-only policy. For bought storage: prices range from 29 EUR/year for 20 GB to 999 EUR/year for 1 TB. Pricing changed in June 2014: The storage plan starts with 0.99 € per month (9 € per year) for 5 GB and ends at 159.90 € per Month (1799 € per year) for 2 TB of storage.

Trading

One of the distinguishing features of Wuala, the ability to trade local disk storage space against cloud storage, is no longer available.

User interfaces

Desktop application

The user interface offers most of the features that are normally associated with a

file manager A file manager or file browser is a computer program that provides a user interface to manage files and folders. The most common operations performed on files or groups of files include creating, opening (e.g. viewing, playing, editing or pr ...

. Additional features come through integration. A registered user can install the

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...

-based client application ( SWT-GUI): * on any number of

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 ...

Mac OS X 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 (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...

and

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 ...

computers * with

FUSE Fuse or FUSE may refer to: Devices * Fuse (electrical), a device used in electrical systems to protect against excessive current ** Fuse (automotive), a class of fuses for vehicles * Fuse (hydraulic), a device used in hydraulic systems to protect ...

, MacFUSE and Dokan respectively for file system integration.

Wuala Webstart and web browsers

Through a

, on a computer that has Java installed: * the user can start/trust a

Java applet Java applets were small applications written in the Java programming language, or another programming language that compiles to Java bytecode, and delivered to users in the form of Java bytecode. The user launched the Java applet from a ...

, which downloads and runs a

class loader The Java Class Loader is a part of the Java Runtime Environment that dynamically loads Java classes into the Java Virtual Machine. Usually classes are only loaded on demand. The Java run time system does not need to know about files and file system ...

allowing fast start of the latest version of the Wuala application. If the computer is without Java, or if running of the class loader is prevented: * any folder that is public, or shared with a

weblink In computing, a hyperlink, or simply a link, is a digital reference to data that the user can follow or be guided by clicking or tapping. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text w ...

, can be browsed.

Non-graphical interfaces

Support for the following may be limited: *

command-line interface A command-line interpreter or command-line processor uses a command-line interface (CLI) to receive commands from a user in the form of lines of text. This provides a means of setting parameters for the environment, invoking executables and pro ...

daemon Daimon or Daemon (Ancient Greek: , "god", "godlike", "power", "fate") originally referred to a lesser deity or guiding spirit such as the daimons of ancient Greek religion and mythology and of later Hellenistic religion and philosophy. The word ...

headless system A headless computer is a computer system or device that has been configured to operate without a monitor (the missing "head"), keyboard, and mouse. A headless system is typically controlled over a network connection, although some headless system ...

Security

According to Wuala's FAQ, the software uses AES-256 for encryption and RSA-2048 for key exchange and signatures. Keys are organized in a key management scheme called Cryptree. According to the FAQ,FAQ entry at http://www.wuala.com/en/support/faq/c/20#id002001 Wuala employs full

client-side encryption Client-side encryption is the cryptographic technique of encrypting data on the sender's side, before it is transmitted to a server such as a cloud storage service. Client-side encryption features an encryption key that is not available to the servi ...

. All files and their metadata – most OS X metadata is not supported – get encrypted before they are uploaded. The encryption key is stored such that no one, not even

that operates the service, can decrypt the stored files. The disadvantage of this is that Wuala has no password recovery and all data processing needs to be done in the client (for example creating a search index). The advantage is significantly improved privacy. Since the source code to Wuala has not been released, it is difficult to ensure that the software does what it states it does (including proper

). Also, updates are pushed automatically to the client machine. These facts mean that users of Wuala are not safe from possible backdoors in

code In communications and information processing, code is a system of rules to convert information—such as a letter, word, sound, image, or gesture—into another form, sometimes shortened or secret, for communication through a communication ...

Reviews

* 2007-10-18
Unlimited online storage for free, almost: Wuala , Webware - CNET
* 2008-05-22
Online Storage with Wuala , Linux Journal
* 2008-08-14
Wuala Makes Online Storage Social , News & Opinion , PCMag.com
* 2008-08-14
Wuala P2P online storage service goes live
(

Download Squad Weblogs, Inc. was a blog network that published content on a variety of subjects, including tech news, video games, automobiles and pop culture. At one point, the network had as many as 90 blogs, although the vast majority of its traffic could be ...

) * 2008-07-18
You Have Three Days To Check Out Wuala's 'Social Grid' Storage
(

TechCrunch TechCrunch is an American online newspaper focusing on high tech and startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare. In 2010, AOL acquired the company for approximately ...

)

Notes and references

External links

* {{official website, http://www.wuala.com/ 2008 software Distributed data storage systems Distributed file systems File hosting File sharing services