Hacker News Reader

The server is usually processing the images anyway, at the very least to remove EXIF metadata, but also to resize and compress the images for different resolutions.

You'd set up the server so that it's okay if it gets exploited. For example, maybe its only job is decoding images.

If an exploit gives you remote code execution on the image transcoding server, you can simply change the transcode operation into a pass through. Hell, you could even start adding your payload to other users' uploads.

I said the decoder, not the encoder.

Then transcode in a different server.

Not transcoding user-uploaded files is borderline negligent.

Transcoding images is why all old pictures on the web a a blocky mess of unholy JPEG.

There are ways to transcode images in such a way that if they're downloaded and reuploaded to your service you don't lose any further quality in your re-upload.

As someone who shared a good deal of Spore creations over the internet, I disagree.

(The game would generate a "card" with a visual preview, but would stuff the XML encoding of the creation into some PNG metadata field so the image could be dragged onto someone else's game.)