There are lots of types of encoding, and some of them are: If it weren’t for this conversion, we would need to read 1’s and 0’s texts in order to understand the messages. This process allows the user to easily communicate with the computer. EncodingĪ computer represents characters using numbers, which is mapped by the ASCII table (a character encoding standard), and then is displayed on the screen. For more information about Google Drive file structure, check their API Reference. There are also a bunch of other attributes, but for this article, the most important ones are the ones listed until now. With that, applications can easily have control of managed files, and keep track of data without displaying it on the graphical interface of Google Drive service. The mime type can be thought of as the magic number for the file.Īnd last but not least, the properties field allows storing key-value objects inside a file. A media type (also known as a Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions or MIME type) is a standard that indicates the nature and format of a document, file, or assortment of bytes. These are the metadata section of a Google Drive file.īy doing some empirical research, it was found that the limit of the value for the name attribute is 10,000 characters long, and for the description it is 25,000 characters long.
Google Drive File StructureĪs listed on Google Drive API reference for Files, a file has a lot of attributes, like name, mimeType, description, properties, and a lot more. If the file has a binary content, a human will likely not be able to easily understand what is inside the file without the help of an application, like EOG. txt file, which the user can easily open, read and understand what is in this file, or the file can also have binary content in it, for example the PNG image. For example, if the file starts with the byte sequence 89 50 4E 47 0D 0A 1A 0A (represented as hexadecimal), it means it is a PNG file.Ī file can have human readable bytes, for example a.
These bytes identify the type of the file, this way the operating system can understand how to manage that file. Usually, the first bytes of the content is a special sequence of bytes called magic numbers. In the data section, we have the content of the file itself. In the metadata section, there are some contents like file name, file size, number of blocks reserved for the file on the disk, and other information that might change according to the used file system. This storage is usually an HD, SSD, or any other kind of device that can store bytes without having to be powered with any kind of electrical energy for some considerable time.įile objects usually have the metadata section, and the data section.
Because of this, the exploitation code for this flaw is not going to be published.Ī file system manages how and where data on a storage device is stored, accessed and managed. The purpose of this paper is simply to share knowledge, and the line of thought I took while I was making this research. “Just be careful in your testing with this and don't do it on your main Gmail account, because there is currently some reactive work to suspend accounts that are doing this quota bypass.” This is the quote of a Google collaborator: Disclaimerīefore using the technique described in this article, keep in mind that Google is aware of this, and according to them, accounts that abuse this flaw can be suspended. It is important to mention that this quota is shared between Google services, like Gmail and Photos. If this quota is reached, it is necessary to buy extra storage to be able to store more files.
Each Google Account includes 15 GB for free to store any kind of files. Google Drive is a file storage cloud service, provided by Google, which allows you to upload any kind of file, and restore it later, whether from the same device, or other supported ones.