Fooling the Free Webspace Providers

How to use Free Webspace Providers for storing your music or other files without being detected? A question whose answer has got lost under it's own weight. File Storing can often come in handy, e.g. if you want to share your programs, pictures, mp3s or as a temporary place to save your overfilled hard disk. This tutorial only tries to show the various forms of loopholes on the servers by which you can beat your way from being detected and does not by any mean try to encourage warez groups to use them. I am not responsible for your actions.

Now lets get move onto the 2nd gear. To achieve this, it is better to have a decent knowledge in HTML. Now get yourself an account with a free webspave provider and make some pages containing your "BS Talking". By using the following tricks and tactics, you can hide your files. However, there is no guarantuee that it will work because the free space providers are constantly looking for ways to block any kind of loopholes which allow you to store illegal files and share them.

To continue from here, you should atleast need to know what file extensions are and how do you change them. If not then search at google, it's pretty easy to learn.


The Traditional Method :

Rename yourfiles, rename them all to .wav (how do you change? search on google). Next, make a page and use a theme like "frogs" as an example, make a page of "Click on these files to hear frog mating calls!"...then a bunch of links to your .WAV files which you have of course given names like mating_frogs.wav, etc. Now whenever you want your files, go to your Mating Call Sounds page, save those (snicker) .WAV's to disk, and change the extension back to what it was! Anyone else surfing onto your pages will confuse it with a (hehe) frog mating calls page. And if some actually downloads them (ghosh!) and complains that your .wav's don't work, it isn't too difficult to come up with a fake file extension and then mention on the page that it's for only your and your friends and families use.

But, many of them now have some sort of file size limit like 1mb. But your file is 5 mb, what can you do??? Use some file splitter tools like winace, you can split files into any no. of parts you want and then just merge it back. So, make parts of your files and rename the files and the file extensions. This can also be useful since the provider may not bother scanning for files which are under their alloted file size limit. Adding to that i have also tried renaming the extension to .htm and .txt since they are the ones which are allowed on the severs. Using them gives you that much better chance as they will show up a page using weird characters when opened up and the admin or any user who opens the page will think it's perhaps not written in english or something.

However, some servers can run some kind of bot that will scan your files and check the headers and come to know their real extension, i.e., .zip, .mp3, etc...whatever extension it has been asked to find and delete. But hey not all use that thing ;-). Similarly, they do not allow you store files if they aren't linked back from your website. This is to avoid people just storing their files and not really making any use of the free space. You can decieve them by doing the following that is if you don't wanna go with the .WAV idea :

Link trick : You can camouflage your links and keep your files from being killed! Example :
--> So, this is how I met her Notice anything odd about this link? If not, run your mouse over the "S". Surprise! You might have found it because I told you to look for it...but a normal surfer wouldn't have noticed it. Now how did i achieve this? By using CSS :

<a href="http://www.blah.com" style="color: white; text-decoration: none;">S</a>o, .....

Using ImageMaps : There is another way to make a blind link. Put it in an imagemap! This allows you to link a file with very little chance of random surfers happening across it. However, this requires you to know the right HTML tags or use of a HTML editor like macromedia dreamweaver.


Advanced Methods :

Using Programming languages
There are many ways to protect your files with javascript as such that only your friends can access it. Search for such javascripts on google, you'll find them. Another trick is to use some sort of a domain banning script to keep admins out from access your site. This could be written in cgi, asp, php, etc..Such a script will check for a particular info like where every visitor's connection is from, etc..and kicks them out if they are on the ban list. Naturally though, if you store files on a machine, the people who have physical access to it can access the files locally.


Hide music files in .SWF
If you know how to use flash, this can be very handy. Import the music file you want to and make it such that when the file opens it plays. Save it is as a .SWF file. Add some graphical effects just to divert attention of the user and upload it. When this file is opened it will play like normal a flash file, just the user won't know what your actual purpose was ;-). After your freinds download that file. They can easily rip the music using a flash file decoder like SWF Decompiler. So the music file is then seperated from the flash file or download a utility called total recorder or any alike which records every sound played by your sound card. So just run the file and record it and save it as .wav, thereafter you can convert it to a .mp3 file using a mp3 encoder which are available in plenty.


Encode them into HTML comments!
Yep inside an HTML document. Take the file you want to store without the administrator finding it, UUencode / MIME / binhex, etc...the file into an ASCII ("quoted-printable") form and stick it as a tag

<html>
<body>
<...name.zzz
JH@^&SLKJN
...>
</body>
</HTML>

If you don't want to mess with encoding you can just dump the raw file contents in between the comment tags. In this case, you have to make sure you upload it as a BINARY file. The default ASCII will possibly damage the file. Also remember that any program you use to retrieve the file back must be able to handle all those funky characters (some msdos editors may fail to do the same)

Also: See the "Camouflage" software here

Finally, remember that the filesize will matter at the end of the day. (Look into some file splitter tools like i mentioned winace).


Conclusions :

Using these or combinations of these it is very much possible to use the free space to your cause. Make sure you to keep changing your accounts from time to time just to avoid any suspicion and don't post any illegal content in the form of texts, files which are also controversial like bomb making recipies, drugs, etc..you get the idea. When you sign up an account at any free webpage provider, don't reveal your true identity. Just make it up. To be more on the cautious side use a proxy.