Brainstorm
U – draw three cards …
Let’s just get this out of the way. I’m a total computer nerd. In class the past 1.5 weeks, I coded up a stack and queue data structures in C++ to a) pass the time and b) refresh my memory on how to do such simple things. Throwback to CS225. Of course the harder parts (function ptrs, generic types, iterators) I’ve forgotten and need a refresher on hence this undertaking. But on with the meat of this post.
Editors note: I was going to write a response listing all these cool ideas I came up in response to Wey, but after looking at Gmail Drive some more, I’ve learned a bunch of limitations. So it won’t be as extensive as I once thought
I mentioned replacing the thumbdrive and personal ftp in my previous post so I won’t go into details about these two facets but I will say there are limitations to gmail as you can’t have file sizes bigger than 10mbs. (Limit on gmail attachment sizes) and you can’t open/execute from the gmail drive, they have to be copied to your harddrive or something. These are actually pretty big limitations as it limits it’s ability as an ftp and another cool idea (though malicious) of possibly being a virus. The message could somehow detect it’s been loaded in the gmail drive then execute a payload. But since it can’t be executed . . . But two good ideas.
- Network Storage Device. – chances are, if you’re in some big corporation, you have corporate drives where the company stores essential files and your project to corroborate with others. You can do that with gmail without exposing your oh-so-vulnerable port 139 to the world AND network across the internet. Share files with people in Illinois, NY, California or even Taiwan (China blocks gmail I hear). I think it is an incredible cool ability (dampened by the ability of not being able to execute or open directly from the drive but this could work to perserve file integrity as you wouldn’t want multiple people simultaneously editting the same file.
- Remote Administration of a computer – You could send a specially crafted email to yourself and remote admin your computer. Far fetched? Write a script that would check you gmail drive for a certain filename, copy the file to your HD, parse the file which would probably be like a .bat file or something to run commands on your computer. Forgot a file at home? send your self a payload to copy that file to your gmail drive so you can get it. I haven’t tested this idea at all but I think it’d be pretty cool and possible to write this up.
So those are two ideas I came up with. Maybe I’ll think of more. I’ve set up a dedicated gmail acct for sharing: nas.0112358 01FIBseq01 Just don’t change the password on me, that wouldn’t be too nice. You can share music, photos, etc, just not viruses/trojans. And if you select https, you have secure file transfer. Pretty nifty. One last cool thing I found while poking around the Gmail Drive. RSS feed of your gmail inbox. That’s pretty sweet, someone send me the code when you do something with it/figure out to link to your messages.