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Storing Very Large Files On Amazon's Unlimited Cloud Photo Storage

Posted by timothy on from the computers-don't-feel-cognitive-dissonance dept.

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.

42 of 229 comments (clear)

  1. This is why by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is why we can't have nice things.

    1. Re:This is why by hawguy · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

    2. Re:This is why by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "Unlimited" does have a very specific meaning, and in this case it means unlimited photos, not unlimited steganography.

    3. Re:This is why by hawguy · · Score: 5, Funny

      "Unlimited" does have a very specific meaning, and in this case it means unlimited photos, not unlimited steganography.

      I happen to have a very extensive collection of photographs of static from my TV and I need someplace to store them.

    4. Re:This is why by mark-t · · Score: 2

      They can't forbid me from uploading images.

      One way that immediately comes to mind is that they could limit the service to jpgs only, and only respect jpgs that use at least some lossy compression, which would be useless for storing any binary data with fidelity.

      Also, they could discontinue the service as a free one entirely.

      The options they have for forbidding you from uploading are far greater than the options you have for trying to get around them.

      --
      File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
    5. Re: This is why by LordKronos · · Score: 3

      Even an old analog TV could give you a 1.44gb photo, when you consider slight variations in subpixel noise (remember...he said photo, not screenshot).

      Now, on the other hand...the camera that takes 1.44gb photos is something that I might actually be interested in.

    6. Re:This is why by ImprovOmega · · Score: 4, Interesting

      There are absolutely ways to stash file data in lossy compressed JPG files. You just have to have some knowledge of the file structure to know what bits are less significant and will mess up the file less. I personally wrote a steganography tool for JPEG-2000 files for a graduate school project - it just stored data in the least damaging sections of the file. The resultant files were still perfectly legal image files, lossy compressed, and minimally visually damaged.

      Now if Amazon were to *transcode* every submission then you would be boned. But that would eat up a fair amount of overhead in processing time.

    7. Re: This is why by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      If your neighbor lets you store your go kart in his garage, it does not mean you get to park yours and the wife's mini vans in there as well.

      BOOM. Car analogy :)

    8. Re: This is why by WarJolt · · Score: 4, Informative

      "Unlimited" does have a very specific meaning, and in this case it means unlimited pornography, not unlimited steganography.

      Fixed it for ya.

    9. Re: This is why by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They offered storage for photos. Data disguised as a .bmp file is not a photo. That's abuse.

    10. Re:This is why by bloodhawk · · Score: 3

      I don't like Amazon, BUT they didn't say unlimited data. They said unlimited Photos. This is the type of abuse that basically ends up hitting legitimate users where limits being imposed will be the end result.

    11. Re:This is why by Fwipp · · Score: 2

      It's more like they took all your pots & pans, telling you they were going to grind them up later because they're iron-deficient. "But you said I could have all the food I wanted!!"

    12. Re:This is why by Ecuador · · Score: 2

      Oh, come on, consumers are furious when they get caught in a small technicality and now you are suggesting that it's Amazon's fault for not thinking "unlimited photos" can also mean "unlimited data posing as photos"? I mean, if somebody was storing many TB of their actual photos Amazon would have no right to say anything based of their promise, but this is not the same thing.

      I've seen this before. I have a Kindle Keyboard which came with a nice little perk: it has a browser (experimental, very simple) and with unlimited 3G internet anywhere in the world. It has helped me numerous times in various trips without having to worry about my phone data roaming. So, at one point people started hacking their Kindles to enable tethering in order to have free unlimited worldwide 3G connections. Technically they could do it, but they sure as hell knew it was not what Amazon meant. We were lucky enough that Amazon did not limit the service too severely after that - you have 20MB in 3G per day and then it slows down to 2G (at least last time I checked). It is still fine for me - 20MB not bad for the e-ink display browser, although it is a limit that you might reach on a busy day and it was only put there because people were using a technicality to abuse the "promise".

      --
      Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
    13. Re:This is why by Nutria · · Score: 2, Interesting

      We, as humans dealing with other humans, assume that they will act with a modicum of sense. But there are a jillion leeches out there who don't, so it's no one's fault but ours for saying (you are) welcome to the food in my kitchen instead of the just-as-friendly you're welcome to a meal in my kitchen.

      And businesses love screwing people over with fine print, so they deserve every bit of screwing over that they get from non-existent fine print.

      --
      "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
    14. Re:This is why by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Isn't it kind of a form of Net Neutrality for people to come up with ways to make sure that service providers can't sort and differentiate pricing for different sorts of content?

    15. Re: This is why by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 2

      Abuse happens when you go way out of your way to test their boundaries. Think about that a bit the next time you complain about things like drone registration.

      --

      "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

    16. Re: This is why by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Interesting

      the camera that takes 1.44gb photos is something that I might actually be interested in.

      Here it is.

    17. Re: This is why by tnk1 · · Score: 2

      I would be amused if they implemented a check for this and then simply said, "we're sorry, it appears your image was very large and might have been corrupted during upload. Please check your file and try again "

    18. Re:This is why by kbg · · Score: 2

      What difference does it make? If you store unlimited data instead of unlimited photos it is still unlimited so as for Amazon it makes no difference.
      Unless of course Amazon really doesn't want you to actually use your "unlimited" storage, but then they should not call it "unlimited".

    19. Re: This is why by tburkhol · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I don't think this would be too hard to implement. If they compress the images before storing, they can just reject any "image" that fails to compress beyond some threshold. They wouldn't even necessarily need to do any screening: use a slightly lossy compression algorithm, images wouldn't look any different, but data would be useless.

    20. Re: This is why by John+Allsup · · Score: 2

      If real people use it for real photos only, then practicality limits the amount of data to well within what Amazon can handle, and means users don't need to care about limits.

      --
      John_Chalisque
    21. Re:This is why by Muad'Dave · · Score: 2

      There's probably a clause in the agreement that allows them to use/sell your photos. If you're uploading data, they can't 'monetize' your data.

      --
      Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
    22. Re: This is why by JoeMerchant · · Score: 2

      If real people use it for real photos only, then practicality limits the amount of data to well within what Amazon can handle

      You don't know my wife: cell phone with 10MP camera, averaging 100 shots per hour when she's not taking video...

    23. Re:This is why by superwiz · · Score: 2

      It's not steganography. It's not data hidden in image. It's data wrapped in bmp header. Pretty simple solution actually. In fact, this would probably look like random noise picture if you tried to view it. Bmp's are just raster images (direct pixel data) with a very thin header in front of it. So anything can be stored as "pixel" data. Steganography usually refers to storing data along with image data (so it degrades the quality of image, but still would look like a real picture when viewed).

      --
      Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
    24. Re:This is why by Aaden42 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      If you read the full Cloud Drive Terms of Service, you'll find nothing in it that associates the word "unlimited" with "photos".

      The Service provides storage, retrieval, management and access features and functionality for your photos, videos, and other files ("Your Files").
      -- CloudDrive ToS

      Everything they've put in writing makes it clear that you're permitted to use unlimited storage to store whatever files you like, so long as you don't resell access, use it as the backing store for another cloud service, etc. Personal use == A-OK.

    25. Re:This is why by Aaden42 · · Score: 3, Informative

      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)

  2. YDKK by turkeydance · · Score: 4, Funny

    almost a Japanese Zipper: YKK

  3. Timothy's Revenge by Nethead · · Score: 4, Interesting

    First the article with the luser asking help desk question and now this with the link in Japaneses.

    I think that with the new overlords Timothy has gone full honey badger on us.

    --
    -- I have a private email server in my basement.
    1. Re: Timothy's Revenge by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 3, Interesting

      timothy has been trolling you guys hard for years. You feed him every. single. time. and sell ad impressions for him while doing so. No wonder the new boss decided to keep him on - his click rate must be fabulous by now with highly refined trolling techniques.

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    2. Re: Timothy's Revenge by Nethead · · Score: 2

      Yeah Bill, some advice from someone that waited until Thursday to sign up for an account unlike those of us that saw the future and signed up on Tuesday back 18 years ago!

      I agree totally with what you say, but, like me, you are still in the comments here. We are both sad bastards. Can I buy you a drink sometime?

      --
      -- I have a private email server in my basement.
    3. Re: Timothy's Revenge by Nethead · · Score: 2

      Okay, the preview showed the "snark" tag that I put on the first line but the published one didn't show that. Now I look like an asshole. Damn you to hell slashcode!

      --
      -- I have a private email server in my basement.
  4. Re:Thanks for abusing the service by rmdingler · · Score: 2

    Yes. Millions of Slashdotters are literally shutting down internet communication as we know it while spreading the news... and eating hot grits off'n the Portman.

    --
    Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

    Ernest Hemingway

  5. I wrote about this possibility last year by bsmuir · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Here is my research...

    Steganography & Amazon Cloud Drive:

    http://bsmuir.kinja.com/stegan...

  6. Too complicated by mariushm · · Score: 4, Informative

    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/...

  7. Re:This is why we can't have nice things. by bobbied · · Score: 2

    Oh there are things in an image that you won't see in some data stuffed into an image container. It's not that hard, a little time consuming and processing intensive perhaps, but not that bad. Consider that they only really need to find that 1-2% who are doing this, abusing their terms of service and just toss them, one could even do it manually for awhile... Hire a bunch of folks to look at a "picture" and tell me if it's really a picture... Heck, make it a CAPTCHA task... Just start with the biggest files and work your way down...

    --
    "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
  8. same data 1 year later? by pz · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Back in the day, when I worked as a dev at a social networking site, we would resample old photos that hadn't been accessed in over some threshold (let's say it was 1 year, for the sake of argument). Anything older than the threshold would get re-encoded in JPEG to a poorer representation in order to save storage space.

    So what stops Amazon from doing the same thing? Do their TOS say they won't?

    Non-image data under those circumstances become pretty much useless, even if packaged so that they appear to be an image of off-station TV reception. Once you include a lossy recompression, your data are no longer data, but noise for real.

    --

    Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
  9. Obligatory by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · · Score: 2

    Japanese user YDKK has developed a tool to store arbitrary data inside a .bmp file, which can then be uploaded to Amazon's service.

    Do you want new terms of service? Because that's how you get new terms of service.

  10. Re:Another new low for Slashot by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · · Score: 3, Funny

    I don't read Japanese, I just look at the cartoon drawings of school girls being super-friendly with the tentacle monsters.

  11. Re:Bad tool by quenda · · Score: 2

    My floppy disks only hold 360K, you insensitive clod.

  12. Unlimited files for $60/yr by pz · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.
    1. Re: Unlimited files for $60/yr by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Yup, I have over 650 gigs (and growing) of 3d 1080p home videos. If my house catches fire or I'm robbed I won't lose them.

      I don't get that kind if throughout though. Uploading 50 gigs of videos takes overnight and a lot of that time is a mysterious delay between the video uploads themselves. I'm guessing the glacier service can't save them fast enough and I have to wait for them to save entirely before I can move to the next video.

  13. Re:This is why, because y has a long tale by TheRealHocusLocus · · Score: 2

    I personally wrote a steganography tool for JPEG-2000 files for a graduate school project - it just stored data in the least damaging sections of the file. The resultant files were still perfectly legal image files, lossy compressed, and minimally visually damaged.

    Kudos for the hands-on. I was fascinated some years ago with progressive GIF overlays and coded some stuff to produce them, not so concerned with stenography and hiding the presence of a message, but more with novel ways of presentation.

    One example was embedding a public key into a GIF image. Starting with a standard base image and palette that was the same for everybody, like a shiny golden key floating over a smooth blue gradient... the key bits encoded as a series of overlays that when displayed, made the key sparkle and the background vary in color, all happening over ~10 seconds. The idea was that while most people didn't stand a chance memorizing much "BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK" gobblegook, we'd be better equipped to remember the distinct "sparkle" of an image. More of a style thing than a useful crypto concept.

    I also experimented with things like encoding process/memory access and toyed with the idea of filesystem journals rendered as displayable GIFs. It was a fascinating foray into the realm of data structures and helped me to become the person I am today. I presently jet sewers for a living.

    Wouldn't it be strange to see some future Slashdot shocker headline, "Bit Rot Discovered In Cloud, All Data Will Be Reduced to Gaussian Noise By 2030". And like the proverbial boiling frog we deny the problem or postpone dealing with it as everything progressively (but slowly) dissolves into static. People who try to raise consciousness and alarm are booed off Slashdot with comments like, "I can read it. What's wrong with you? posted by folks who are also having trouble reading things but enjoy sniping at others more. Then as it reaches the final stages all electronic mediums are projecting mostly static but people are pretending they see and understand the messages perfectly. And most oddly, when we hit Peak Gaussian something resembling a modern society continues to function. Then unfettered by structure society literally melts into phantasmagorical goo. Something... like... THIS.

    --
    <blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>