Cloud Storage Download Appears to Be Malicious - google-chrome

I uploaded a utility in the last few days to google cloud storage.
It's a zip file containing two executables and a readme file.
I tested the download and it worked fine. I then looked into how I could see the download stats and yesterday I enabled logging.
I posted the link to a mailing list this afternoon and clicked it to verify that I had the right link and the download in chrome reports "xxx.zip appears to be malicious".
This did not happen prior to when I enabled logging, but I don't know for sure that is what caused it.
I am using a CNAME alias for the download, and I am a paying google apps customer.
The executables are not malicious in any way. They are simple utilities for doing replacements in text files. They do not access the network at all.
My question is "Why is my zip file being reported as malicious?" and is there any way to remedy this situation?

I looked around for a solution to this problem and I found the following advice:
1) Sign your EXEs. As it turns out, this advice is incorrect. While it has worked for some people, there are people who report that even signed executables are reported as malicious downloads.
2) Use SSL. SSL access is not available for google cloud storage unless you use the commondatastorage.googleapis.com or sandbox.google.com URLs. While this does might work, it doesn't resolve my problem.
3) Use the commondatastorage.googleapis.com URL. This works. The same file using the commondatastorage.googleapis.com url rather than my custom CNAME record does not report that it "appears malicious".
4) Register your site with Google Webmaster Tools. Getting around Chrome's Malicious File Warning According to this stackoverflow entry, the solution is to sign up for Google Webmaster Tools and add your site.
I have tried this one, but it has not made a change just yet. Because this is google cloud storage and not a main site, I added an index.html page, a 404 page, and ran the gsutil commands to enable web configuration within google cloud storage. I added the site to Webmaster Tools and additionally added it to Google Analytics.
I'll give solution 4 a few days to see if it pans out.
It seems like this is more of an issue with Google Chrome and not necessarily Google Cloud Storage. Chrome's methods for identifying malicious files are less than desirable right now.

Related

What is the internal file format of a .glink file?

I would like to add URL links into a web-based Google Drive folder. Searching online, it appears that this was once possible with files that ended in a .glink extension. I'm looking for documentation on the file format so that I can create them programmatically.
[EDIT] Why do I want to create .glink files? Because I want links (bookmarks, URLs) to be able to appear in my Google Drive web page and to be able to click on them an go to the page. Microsoft OneDrive supports this functionality.
GLINKS Files
The URL link file feature was available due to a workaround with Back Up and Sync before being deprecated with Drive for Desktop. The .glink seems to be patched and no longer available as it was also part of a third party tool no longer available. It seems it now only saves them as .URL and automatically gives it the icon for Google Docs, as it would take it as a simple file with text.
Checking the .url type file of Windows, when uploading to Drive it does not update as it should, even utilizing Drive for Desktop (as an alternative to sync data like back up and sync) the outcome is the one suggested above.
This is the main reason why there is no longer any documentation about the matter, due to this one not being an official feature and being also fully deleted, it can be confirm by the file type available when creating files with the Drive API:
https://developers.google.com/drive/api/guides/ref-export-formats
I would suggest to request a feature to allow this or to provide a new way to store URL links as before or report it to review if possible any references on how it used to work by submitting a feature request or checking the issue tracker about the matter:
https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/new?component=191650&template=824106
You can also add the details of the previous threads or discussions about the GLINKS.

Google Colaboratory and Google Drive integration fails

I am not able to save a new notebook in my Google Drive environment.
Google Colaboratory works with predefined notebooks such as Hello, Colaboratory, but I am not able to save any into my Drive folder.
I have the Colaboratory app allowed in the Google Drive settings and really dont know how to solve it. Colaboratory communicates with Drive - it even creates the notebook files in the Google Drives folder, but when loading any notebook file it always report following Notebook loading error
There was an error loading this notebook. Ensure that the file is accessible and try again.
Neither the details of the error help much:
Failed to fetch TypeError: Failed to fetch
I was playing with the access rights of both the file and the folder and could not find any solution.
Update: Chrome 64.0.3282.167 (64 bit); Windows 10 1709. I use two users on the Chrome. Creating Notebooks works normally on different computers with my username.
This is the output from console:
Chrome Console Output
On Google Chrome, I was seeing this issue randomly and it mentioned not being able to load the file /some/google/path/thats/gone/because/this/fixed/it/client.js. I tried clearing my cache and hard reloading, and sure enough, Colab starting working again.
As with standard cookies, third-party cookies are placed so that a site can remember something about you at a later time. Both are typically used to store surfing and personalization preferences and tracking information.
Google's colaboratory uses third party cookies and your browser most likely has them disabled.
Navigate to your browser settings, search for cookies and enable third party cookies. This should hopefully fix your problem.
I had the same problem, and I just disabled AdBlock on google Colab in everything works perfectly.
try to close/pause AdBlock and reload the page, it works for me.

How to prevent Google Chrome from blocking my installer package

I've prepared and published on my website an installer package with the software I developed. The package is compiled and bundled into .exe file using WiX toolset and contains no viruses or malware. Next when I try to download the file I get a notification from Chrome that it's blocked due to malicious content.
Malicious content warning
I'm really upset that my customers being misinformed with such warning. Any ideas how to get around it?
Google created this page for developers - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/3258249.
Even though it doesn't say it on there, almost all auto-detection software will not block software that is digitally signed (and there is no bad reputation associated with the signing certificate).
If it's a simple file, just upload it to Google Drive or DropBox, and generate a public link for it and then share it on your website.
You can also shorten that link, if your application provide this service, or via goo.gl, in order to view clicks' count.
If any developer come across this issue, I manage to resolve it by streaming the downloadable file instead, via different URL (which doesn't have the file name and its extension with file's full path on your hosting).
Doing so by manipulating the response header, will fix the issue.
Here is a useful link about streaming a downloadable via php script

Can chrome extension modify a file in our hard drive?

I am making a chrome extension which needs to add/delete/modify file in any location in our hard drive. The location can be temporary folder. How is it possible to make it. Please give comments and helpful links which can lead to me have this work done.
You can not, but adding a local server (nodejs/deno/cs-script/go/python/lua/..) to have a fixed logic (security) to do file stuff and providing a http server to answer back in an ajax/jsonp request would work.
The extension will not be able to install the software part.
edit: if you want to get started using nodejs, this could help
edit2: With File and Directory Entries API (this could help) you can get hold of a FILE OR complete FOLDER (getDirectory(), showDirectoryPicker()).
Thankfully, this is impossible.
Google or any other company wouldn't have many friend if their extension(s') installation caused compromise including complete control over any files(ie. control over machine) on your hard drive. The extension can save information to disk in a location that is available for storing local information as mentioned. You will not have any execute permission on the root or anywhere nor will you have any read or write permission outside of the storage location.
However, extensions can still be malicious if they gather information from a user of a web page (I am sure that Google can filter some suspicious extensions).
If you really need to make changes on your hard drive you can store information on a server and poll for changes with a windows client application or perhaps you can find where the storage information is kept and access it from there from a windows app.

I am facing "The authenticated user has not installed the app with client id" error even after installing the app [duplicate]

I'm working on a Google Drive interface for Emacs. The concept is that Emacs could provide a platform-agnostic way to load, modify and save text documents stored in Google Drive. I've registered my app and can authenticate with OAuth2 and get a file listing with the Docs List API, but when I try to execute an Insert with the Google Drive API, I see an error:
"The authenticated user has not installed the app with client id ..."
Reading further, it seems I need to publish my Emacs application in the Chrome Web Store to get access to the Drive API. That doesn't make sense to me...I noticed that there is a FUSE project in development for Google Drive, which suggests that native development is possible. When I skimmed the code, however, I didn't see a Chrome Web Store component to getting it working.
Am I trying to misuse the API, or is there an route to make this work that makes more sense?
EDIT:
According to Ali Afshar, of the Google Drive team, installation is no longer required to use this API. So what follows may no longer be relevant, but will be left for historical purposes.
So, first off the API does not support application development in the sense that we are both doing it, I wouldn't use the word native though. The good news is I have been doing some research and Google Drive is really just a rebranding of Google Docs. So the Google Docs API could be a good choice as well for the same purposes.
Anyway, here's the steps to solve the error: "The authenticated user has not installed the app with client id ..." Which is a 403 error, for the sake of this answer. These steps assume you have set up an app in the chrome web store as is required, and installed it. I am working on my local machine too, with my project: http://github.com/tom-dignan/gdrive-cli which I have gotten past this error, so I think you should keep plugging away at your emacs version, because I think we can make this work.
a. Open the Google APIs console.
b. Confirm you've already enabled the apis under "API Access" both the API and SDK for Google drive should be enabled. There you get your client secrets/api keys and such. I am almost positive you've done this already, so go ahead to C. (this is here for others who may have missed it)
c. In the left navigation bar, under "Drive SDK" you will need to do the following:
Add a "Support URL" (required)
Add at least a small 16x16 application icon (required)
Add "OAuth Client ID (Required)" under Drive Integration (I was just tinkering and this seems to be the key field.)
Add "Open URL (Required) URL to open for your app from the google drive UI."
Check off "Multiple File Support"
Add some MIME types and file extensions, "text/plain", and txt for example
Add the the auth scopes:
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/userinfo.email
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/userinfo.profile
Don't bother trying to add the auth scopes for Google Docs here, because it won't work. Google does not want us to use it that way because files that drive apps create should be private to that app. Integration with Google Docs will have to be separate.
Now I know you must be thinking "why do I have to add some of these..." It's because the form makes them required fields. In mine, I put a couple URLs that point to static HTML pages.
Once you've done the above, clean up your state and reinstall your chrome app. Then try your code again, and it should stop giving you a 403.