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Rclone

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Rclone
Original authorNick Craig-Wood[1]
DevelopersNick Craig-Wood,[2] Ivan Andreev[3]
ReleaseJuly 3, 2014; 12 years ago (2014-07-03)[4]
Stable release
1.74.4[5] Edit this on Wikidata / 8 July 2026
Written inGo[6]
Operating systemLinux, Windows, macOS, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Plan9, Solaris[6]
PlatformIntel/AMD-64, Intel/AMD-32, ARM-32, ARM-64, MIPS-Big-Endian, MIPS-Little-Endian[6]
LicenceMIT
Websiterclone.org
Repositorygithub.com/rclone/rclone

Rclone is an open source, multi threaded, command line computer program to manage or migrate content on cloud and other high latency storage. Its capabilities include sync, transfer, crypt, cache, union, compress and mount. The rclone website lists supported backends including S3 and Google Drive.[6]

Rclone is well known for its rclone sync and rclone mount commands.[7] It provides further management functions analogous to those ordinarily used for files on local disks, but which tolerate some intermittent and unreliable service. Rclone is commonly used with media servers such as Plex,[8] Emby or Jellyfin[9] to stream content direct from consumer file storage services.[8]

Official Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, Arch, Brew, Chocolatey, and other package managers include rclone.[10]

History

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Nick Craig-Wood was inspired by rsync.[11][12] Concerns about the noise and power costs arising from home computer servers prompted him to embrace cloud storage and he began developing rclone as open source software in 2012 under the name swiftsync.[13][14][1]

Rclone was promoted to stable version 1.00 in July 2014.[4]

In May 2017, Amazon Drive barred new users of rclone and other upload utilities, citing security concerns.[15] Amazon Drive had been advertised as offering unlimited storage for £55 per year. Amazon's AWS S3 service continues to support new rclone users.

The original rclone logo was updated in September 2018.[16]

In March 2020, Nick Craig-Wood resigned from Memset Ltd, a cloud hosting company he founded, to focus on open source software.[17][14][18][19]

Amazon's AWS April 2020 public sector blog explained how the Fred Hutch Cancer Research Center were using rclone in their Motuz tool to migrate very large biomedical research datasets in and out of AWS S3 object stores.[20]

In November 2020, rclone was updated to correct a weakness in the way it generated passwords. Passwords for encrypted remotes can be generated randomly by rclone or supplied by the user. In all versions of rclone from 1.49.0 to 1.53.2 the seed value for generated passwords was based on the number of seconds elapsed in the day, and therefore not truly random. CVE-2020-28924 recommended users upgrade to the latest version of rclone and check the passwords protecting their encrypted remotes.[21]

Release 1.55 of rclone in March 2021 included features sponsored by CERN and their CS3MESH4EOSC project.[22] The work was EU funded to promote vendor-neutral application programming interfaces and protocols for synchronisation and sharing of academic data on cloud storage.[23]

Backends and commands

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Rclone supports the following services as backends. There are others, built on standard protocols such as WebDAV or S3, that work.[6] WebDAV backends do not support rclone functionality dependent on server side checksum or modtime.[24]

Remotes are usually defined interactively from these backends, local disk, or memory (as S3), with rclone config. Rclone can further wrap those remotes with one or more of alias, chunk, compress, crypt or union, remotes.

Once defined, the remotes are referenced by other rclone commands interchangeably with the local drive. Remote names are followed by a colon to distinguish them from local drives. For example, a remote example_remote containing a folder, or pseudofolder, myfolder is referred to within a command as a path example_remote:/myfolder.[34]

Academic evaluation

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In 2018, University of Kentucky researchers published a conference paper comparing use of rclone and other command line, cloud data transfer agents for big data.[35] The paper was published as a result of funding by the National Science Foundation.[36]

Later that year, University of Utah's Center for High Performance Computing examined the impact of rclone options on data transfer rates.[37]

Use in cybercrime

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May 2020 reports stated rclone had been used by hackers to exploit Diebold Nixdorf ATMs with ProLock ransomware.[38][39] The FBI issued a Flash Alert MI-000125-MW on May 4, 2020, in relation to the compromise.[40] They issued a further, related alert 20200901–001 in September 2020. Attackers had exfiltrated / encrypted data from organisations involved in healthcare, construction, finance, and legal services. Multiple US government agencies, and industrial entities were affected. Researchers established the hackers spent about a month exploring the breached networks, using rclone to archive stolen data to cloud storage, before encrypting the target system.[40][41][42] Reported targets included LaSalle County, and the city of Novi Sad.[43][44]

The FBI warned January 2021, in Private Industry Notification 20210106–001, of extortion activity using Egregor ransomware and rclone. Organisations worldwide had been threatened with public release of exfiltrated data. In some cases rclone had been disguised under the name svchost.[45] Bookseller Barnes & Noble, US retailer Kmart, games developer Ubisoft and the Vancouver metro system have been reported as victims.[46]

An April 2021, cybersecurity investigation into SonicWall VPN zero-day vulnerability SNWLID-2021-0001[47] by FireEye's Mandiant team established attackers UNC2447 used rclone for reconnaissance and exfiltration of victims' files.[48] Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Analysis Report AR21-126A confirmed this use of rclone in FiveHands ransomware attacks.[49]

See also

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References

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  1. 1 2 Craig-Wood, Nick (November 21, 2018). "Rclone "rsync for cloud storage"" (PDF). craig-wood.com. Archived (PDF) from the original on December 4, 2020. Retrieved July 30, 2020.
  2. ↑ Craig-Wood, Nick (September 3, 2020). "Rclone 1.53 release". rclone. Archived from the original on November 5, 2021. Retrieved September 17, 2020.
  3. ↑ Craig-Wood, Nick (February 2, 2021). "Rclone 1.54 release". rclone forum. Archived from the original on February 2, 2021. Retrieved May 6, 2021.
  4. 1 2 "Changelog". rclone. Archived from the original on May 4, 2022. Retrieved July 29, 2020.
  5. ↑ "Release 1.74.4". July 8, 2026. Retrieved July 9, 2026.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 "Rclone". rclone. Archived from the original on June 17, 2020. Retrieved July 29, 2020.
  7. ↑ Tozzi, Christopher (September 25, 2020). "How to Access S3 Buckets from Windows or Linux". Itpro Today: It News, How-Tos, Trends, Case Studies, Career Tips, More. Archived from the original on October 29, 2020. Retrieved September 27, 2020.
  8. 1 2 "Recommended Google Drive and Plex Mount Settings". rclone forum. July 10, 2018. Archived from the original on October 24, 2020. Retrieved September 17, 2020.
  9. ↑ "Storage | Documentation - Jellyfin Project". jellyfin.org. Archived from the original on January 22, 2021. Retrieved November 10, 2020.
  10. ↑ "rclone package versions - Repology". repology.org. Archived from the original on October 30, 2020. Retrieved September 17, 2020.
  11. ↑ Craig-Wood, Nick (September 9, 2020). "Rclone --links gets tripped up by existing .rclonelink files". rclone forum. Archived from the original on June 2, 2022. Retrieved September 17, 2020.
  12. ↑ "rclone/rclone". July 31, 2020. Archived from the original on June 30, 2020. Retrieved July 29, 2020 – via GitHub.
  13. ↑ Craig-Wood, Nick (June 10, 2020). "Is rclone more efficient than an nfs mount". rclone forum. Archived from the original on June 2, 2022. Retrieved July 29, 2020.
  14. 1 2 "Meet The Team". Memset. Archived from the original on March 23, 2021. Retrieved September 17, 2020.
  15. ↑ Claburn, Thomas (May 23, 2017). "Amazon Drive bans rclone storage client". The Register. Archived from the original on August 11, 2020. Retrieved July 30, 2020.
  16. ↑ "A New Logo for rclone". rclone forum. September 30, 2018. Archived from the original on June 2, 2022. Retrieved July 30, 2020.
  17. ↑ Craig-Wood, Nick (May 27, 2020). "Rclone 1.52 release". rclone forum. Archived from the original on May 6, 2021. Retrieved September 17, 2020.
  18. ↑ "MEMSET LTD - Officers (free information from Companies House)". beta.companieshouse.gov.uk. Archived from the original on June 2, 2022. Retrieved September 17, 2020.
  19. ↑ "Trading Update, Iomart Group PLC, 2020-04-03". AIM-Watch. April 3, 2020. Archived from the original on June 2, 2022. Retrieved September 17, 2020.
  20. ↑ Rogers, Ray (April 16, 2020). "How Fred Hutch unlocks siloed data with AWS and open-source software". Amazon Web Services. Archived from the original on July 12, 2020. Retrieved July 30, 2020.
  21. ↑ "CVE - CVE-2020-28924". cve.mitre.org. November 19, 2020. Archived from the original on November 19, 2020. Retrieved November 20, 2020.
  22. ↑ Craig-Wood, Nick (March 31, 2021). "Rclone 1.55 release". rclone forum. Archived from the original on May 6, 2021. Retrieved May 6, 2021.
  23. ↑ "Interactive and agile/responsive sharing mesh of storage, data and applications for EOSC". Cordis. Archived from the original on May 6, 2021. Retrieved May 6, 2021.
  24. ↑ Winokur, Justin (October 5, 2020). "iDrive.com Support". rclone forum. Archived from the original on October 9, 2020. Retrieved October 5, 2020.
  25. ↑ "Aruba Cloud Object Storage". rclone forum. October 10, 2020. Archived from the original on June 2, 2022. Retrieved October 12, 2020.
  26. ↑ Roetert, Niels (August 28, 2019). "S3 Bucket migration with metadata issues". rclone forum. Archived from the original on June 2, 2022. Retrieved September 26, 2020.
  27. ↑ "Is anybody using Dell EMC Object Storage successfully with rclone?". rclone forum. September 23, 2020. Archived from the original on June 2, 2022. Retrieved September 25, 2020.
  28. 1 2 Craig-Wood, Nick (February 2, 2021). "Rclone 1.54 release". rclone forum. Archived from the original on February 2, 2021. Retrieved March 8, 2021.
  29. ↑ "Can't ls to sub directory? sorry, total newbie here". rclone forum. November 11, 2019. Archived from the original on October 2, 2020. Retrieved September 22, 2020.
  30. ↑ "RClone". openio.io. Archived from the original on August 6, 2020. Retrieved September 22, 2020.
  31. ↑ "OOM with big buckets". rclone forum. September 16, 2020. Archived from the original on September 19, 2020. Retrieved September 17, 2020.
  32. ↑ "Cloud Object Storage that supports an Amazon S3-compatible API". selectel.ru. Archived from the original on June 3, 2020. Retrieved September 17, 2020.
  33. ↑ "Add Selectel.com Storage support · Issue #4472 · rclone/rclone". GitHub. July 30, 2020. Archived from the original on June 2, 2022. Retrieved September 17, 2020.
  34. ↑ McKay, Dave (January 10, 2020). "How to Use rclone to Back Up to Google Drive on Linux". How-To Geek. Archived from the original on August 4, 2020. Retrieved July 30, 2020.
  35. ↑ "Navigating the Unexpected Realities of Big Data Transfers in a Cloud-based World". National Science Foundation. Archived from the original on October 9, 2020. Retrieved August 1, 2020.
  36. ↑ "NSF Award Search: Award#1541380 - CC*DNI Networking Infrastructure: An Software Defined Networking-Enabled Research Infrastructure". National Science Foundation. May 9, 2018. Archived from the original on September 28, 2018. Retrieved August 1, 2020.
  37. ↑ "rclone - Center for High Performance Computing - The University of Utah". The University of Utah. Archived from the original on August 10, 2020. Retrieved August 1, 2020.
  38. ↑ Millman, Rene (May 23, 2020). "Diebold Nixdorf ATM attack by ProLock ransomware used QakBot trojan to access networks". S C Magazine. Archived from the original on June 9, 2020. Retrieved July 30, 2020.
  39. ↑ Ilascu, Ionut (May 14, 2020). "ProLock Ransomware teams up with QakBot trojan for network access". BleepingComputer. Archived from the original on June 13, 2020. Retrieved July 30, 2020.
  40. 1 2 Gatlan, Sergiu (September 5, 2020). "FBI issues second alert about ProLock ransomware stealing data". Data Breaches. Archived from the original on September 29, 2020. Retrieved September 17, 2020.
  41. ↑ Ilascu, Ionut (September 10, 2020). "ProLock ransomware increases payment demand and victim count". BleepingComputer. Archived from the original on September 10, 2020. Retrieved September 17, 2020.
  42. ↑ Skulkin, Oleg (May 14, 2020). "ATT&CKing ProLock Ransomware". group-ib.com. Archived from the original on August 3, 2020. Retrieved September 17, 2020.
  43. ↑ "ProLock Ransomware" (PDF). sisainfosec.com. Retrieved July 30, 2020.[permanent dead link]
  44. ↑ Abrams, Lawrence (March 2, 2020). "New PwndLocker Ransomware Targeting U.S. Cities, Enterprises". BleepingComputer. Archived from the original on September 16, 2020. Retrieved September 17, 2020.
  45. ↑ "FBI Private Industry Notification 20210106-001" (PDF). FBI. January 6, 2021. Archived (PDF) from the original on January 8, 2021. Retrieved January 21, 2021.
  46. ↑ Montalbano, Elizabeth (January 8, 2021). "FBI Warns of Egregor Attacks on Businesses Worldwide". Threatpost. Archived from the original on January 22, 2021. Retrieved January 21, 2021.
  47. ↑ "Security Advisory". psirt.global.sonicwall.com. February 3, 2021. Archived from the original on May 8, 2021. Retrieved May 6, 2021.
  48. ↑ McLellan, Tyler; Moore, Justin; Leong, Raymond (April 29, 2021). "UNC2447 SOMBRAT and FIVEHANDS Ransomware: A Sophisticated Financial Threat". FireEye. Archived from the original on May 5, 2021. Retrieved May 6, 2021.
  49. ↑ "FiveHands Ransomware | CISA". cert. May 6, 2021. Archived from the original on May 10, 2021. Retrieved May 10, 2021.
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