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Storing Very Large Files On Amazon's Unlimited Cloud Photo Storage
AmiMoJo writes: Last year Amazon started offering unlimited cloud storage for photos to customers who subscribed to its "Prime" service. Japanese user YDKK has developed a tool to store arbitrary data inside a .bmp file, which can then be uploaded to Amazon's service. A 1.44GB test image containing an executable file uploaded at over 250Mb/sec, far faster than typical cloud storage services that are rate limited and don't allow extremely large files.
This is why we can't have nice things.
This is why Marketing shouldn't promise things that they can't deliver. They should know that "unlimited" has a specific meaning and if they don't mean it, they shouldn't promise it.
Seems quite complicated.
If Amazon doesn't convert the images, he could just upload a PNG file with a lot of information stored in ancillary chunks... the png specification even allows creating custom/developer chunks which should be ignored by any parser that doesn't understand them (for compatibility with future versions of the standard)
For example, just abuse the hell out of iTXt or zTXt chunks in the format : http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/...
For private chunks, see this bit : http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/...
If you take the trouble to read through Amazon's TOS, and click to their actual rates, you can buy unlimited storage for photos, videos, AND ARBITRARY FILES for only $60 per year. Not only that, but Prime gets you 5 GB of videos and non-photo files for free.
Going through all the hassle of specially encoding your data files so that they masquerade as photos seems like a heapload of time better spent earning $60 so that you don't have the long-term headaches and potential for being banned from Amazon's service that such abuses flirt with. You want a real backup service? Buy it, it isn't expensive.
Backblaze, a darling of Slashdot, is only $50 per year. It isn't worth the hassle or time to beat the system for such low prices. Amazon Glacier is $0.007/GB/month. Both systems offer encrypted storage. Why work hard when someone else has done the figuring out for you?
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
"Unlimited" does have a very specific meaning, and in this case it means unlimited pornography, not unlimited steganography.
Fixed it for ya.
And having now read TFS, I sheepishly rescind my previous post... This is the Prime photos thing, not the actual Cloud Drive storage thing. Previous post applies to Cloud Drive Unlimited. Yes, storing unlimited data for the photos only service is being a dick. Shell out the $60/year.
(And if you do, pushing ZFS backups into it is a thing I'm working on... zfs-acd-backup)