TinyDisk, A File System on Someone Else's Web App

Psy writes "I attended Phreaknic this weekend where Acidus released TinyDisk, a shared file system that runs on top of TinyURL or his own implementation NanoURL. TinyDisk compresses a file, encrypts it, and dices it into clusters. Each cluster is submitted to TinyURL as if it were a url. This clusters can be read back out of the database, making TinyDisk a global file system anyone can use. There are safeguards in the default config to prevent people from dumping gigs of MP3s into TinyURL. While file-system-on-web-applications are nothing new (GMail file system anyone?) this hack shows how easy it is to accidentally design a web application insecurely despite the default PHP protections. See his presentation for more info"

Comments

Google and banks

[obli]

Google's got a similar way of using unorthodox methods of sending data.
If you're in the AdSense program and want to get your first payment via electronic wire they won't contact you bank to verify your account, but try to deposit a small sum of money, then ask the user to verify the exact amount.

Naturally this won't have any other good uses as it would be the most expensive way to send data ever, just imagine every few bytes costing you a cent. I wouldn't complain about recievng that data, though...

I have a fwiend in Wome ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... named Bigus Diskus!