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I have been using CrashPlan for a while internally (i.e. local backup server). I would also like to setup off-site backup but my experience is that I have to forward a port from the router sitting at the perimeter of the network where my offsite server is to be located. Otherwise, the client and server cannot see each other.

However, I am reluctant to forward a port to the CrashPlan server without knowing what I am exposing but I have not been able to find any information about the network protocol(s) used by CrashPlan (non-Business edition).

Does anybody know what network protocols and/or encryption CrashPlan is using when communicating and can it be considered safe to forward a port from the network perimeter down to a CrashPlan server?

Edit: If anybody from Code42 is reading here, you are welcome to write an answer as I believe this is of general interest for everyone wanting to use CrashPlan. Maybe a document already exists which you can link to in the reply.

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The connections CrashPlan uses are encrypted using TLS. (I've casually seen the traffic when looking at other things.) As for whether or not it's safe: the protocol doesn't really matter, only whether CrashPlan has exploitable bugs in their software, and that's pretty hard to discern without either extensive reverse engineering or access to their source code.

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  • Yes, off course you are right, so I was after whether they were using e.g. TLS or maybe some homegrown encrypted transport. Also, there are really two security concerns: 1) Are everything really encrypted before leaving my computer? 2) Are there any exploitable bugs in the network protocol? And you are right, it is all about trusting Code42 when we do not have access to the source.
    – mgd
    Sep 9, 2014 at 11:20

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