The approach could be used for spear phishing attacks that trick users into compromising their systems. You might get a notification of a document update and grab the file without realizing the threat.

Nikoci said he notified Google about the issue, but that it was still unpatched as of August 22nd. We’ve asked Google for comment.

This would mainly be useful for attacking companies that rely on Google Drive for sharing documents, but that’s increasingly common. The description also suggests that this would require a significant change to Drive’s version control. For now, the best solutions may be to use antivirus software and be wary of Google Drive file update alerts, especially if you weren’t expecting them.